Lucifugous
by temperednightsky
Summary: He almost questioned why he half-agreed to partner with her without taking a closer look at her first. It wasn't her fault, he knew it, it was his for not thinking it through. /Altered Canon/
1. Prologue

This was bad. Maka was sure this was really, _really bad_.  
She knew this school inside-out, she'd been here _countless_ times with her father, and yet, one wrong turn and she was lost? That couldn't happen.  
Her steps echoed through the dark corridors.

Of course they were dark.

She could certainly hear the gathering going on _somewhere _in the large building, but she just didn't know where she had to go. For her, all the walls were leading her in circles and she couldn't just make out one distinct feature that could possibly tell her where she was.

Maka sighed and leaned against one of the cold walls. Her father would give her an earful once she made it back. If she managed to.

Why did she leave again? Oh, yes, because she couldn't find anyone who actually wanted to partner with her and met her expectations. Not that she thought they were good choices anyway, but they could have been a little politer with the way they rejected her.

It wasn't like she was carrying a virus or something nasty like that.

At least she knew she didn't miss out. There wasn't any kind of 'pull' she heard some of the other new students talk about, some of them which had already found someone to their liking.  
If anything, most of the people repulsed her in a way. There was one girl, a nice one with a soft voice. But seeing that she was a special kind of weapon, they both agreed that it would be bad idea to actually try it out, even if it would have been nice.

So at one point when it felt like most of the people had already found their partners (apart from some unlucky kids who probably would have to sit it out until next year – she'd be one of them too, she thought), Maka had just taken off to walk her frustrations off in the hallway.

And here she was. Sitting against a wall in _some_ part of the school.

Part of her wanted to stay slumped against the concrete, but feeling a little too proud for it to end like this, she got up again, brushed imaginary dirt off her dress, and took off again. At least tomorrow she'd be able to wear a uniform, and not something expensive that felt like it would rip if it made contact with any hard surface. Or a hand. Or anything.  
She had already passed by a couple of rooms (she assumed she was somewhere in the eastern part of Shibusen, but wasn't quite sure) when she heard someone wildly abusing the keys of a piano. At least she thought that person was abusing them, they could be really excited, for all she knows. Not that she would know the difference, that kind of thing wasn't her world.

This gave her the hint she needed. She was close to the music room. She did not know why in the world this school would need a music room, but it was there, and it probably just saved her from getting completely lost. Internally, she was already thanking the person that vented their frustrations on the piano.

* * *

Soul had fled the awkward social situation life decided to put him in.

People as individuals can be challenging, but as a group, they were nothing but annoying. And exhausting, a mass of babbling idiots with high expectations, mostly bad manners and _no idea on how not to make other people feel like shit._

So he left before it really started, and found himself in another room he didn't like all that much, but at least it only had _things_ in them, and not people. At least a piano would not talk hollow nonsense to him.

Or maybe it did, and he couldn't hear it over the sound of the resentment he held towards himself.  
It was all the same to him anyway. Also he knew pianos couldn't talk.

He wondered what would happen to him if he didn't find a partner that night, and came to the conclusion that they would either ship him back home (which he didn't agree with) or make him sit out one year without a partner (which he agreed with – at least a little).

It wasn't really his fault though, he thought. Everyone there expected to find someone really awesome, and he just couldn't promise anyone he would be awesome, also, he didn't like the people he saw there.

They all felt off to him – it wasn't something personal. They were just off.  
They were also afraid to talk to him, he noticed. Red eyes probably weren't a big plus on the scale from _un__likable_ to_ likable_.

So Soul just sat there, mindlessly playing anything he could think of and not really caring.

It would all be over soon, and he wouldn't have to care for another year.

He pressed the last key down (a little too violently), and pulled down the covering.  
And then he twitched. There was a girl standing in the door frame, and she smiled at him.

"That was nice," she said. Her voice was neither squeaky and high like some girls liked to fake to appear cute, nor was it deep and totally unfitting for her appearance.

He just growled. If there was one thing he didn't want, it's company or an audience.

"No, it wasn't."

"If you say so. But I still liked it. Even if it sounded like you were beating up the poor thing."

The girl snickered. Her blonde pigtails started moving with her head. He wondered how or why she came here or ended up here. Wasn't the whole event somewhere else, far away?

"Lucky for you, being tone-deaf obviously doesn't disqualify you from attending this school," Soul just pressed through his teeth, "otherwise you'd be in trouble."

She tilted her head in confusion. The room was dimly lit (as it was not in use right now), and he could hardly make out anything beside the initial color of her hair and the fact that her dress was a plum color.

He also felt awkward because he had just been pretty rude to some girl he hardly knew.

"Did you lose your partner or something, are you searching for them? Because there's no one else here, I can assure you." Rude again. He waited for some disembodied voice to reprimand him, but nothing happened.

"I don't have a partner," she just answered in a rather mellow tone, "I just got lost. Hey, are you by any chance a weapon? I haven't found one I .. like yet."

The rather direct question took him by surprise. Not only that, as far as he could tell, she wasn't staring at him. Also no weird comments about his looks. Maybe it wasn't so bad that she had shown up here, at least it gave him the chance to not look like a loser.  
He couldn't understand why she didn't have anyone yet, because as far as he could tell, she seemed rather friendly, sociable and maybe even cute (but he wasn't close enough to tell yet).

Of course these things may stem from the fact that tonight he had only been around people who certainly weren't friendly or cute.  
One of the attendees had a poodle with them. The poodle was cute.

But that was it.

"Um, maybe, yes." came out of his mouth, in a fashion he could describe as really, really, not very cool. But he quickly decided that he wasn't trying to be for the moment.

The girl perked up in a very excited way, her hair swaying from left to right and back again. She even clapped her hands together like an excited seal performing in front of an audience in an amusement park. Only that she seemed less eager to get a raw fish as a reward.

"Really! What kind of weapon are you," she chirped happily "my name is Maka, this is great!"

"..scythe, I guess? Do you really th-"

"Oh, great! Just like Papa then!" it was like she was trying wiggle herself out of the near-darkness by now, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, the hem of the short dress moved with the motion. She seemed to be hesitant suddenly. "Hm, even if you are a boy."

Great, he thought, she shouldn't compare him to her father, he's probably fifty and has about seven-hundred years of experience more than he does. She'd be in for disappointment.

"Being male just gives me the freedom to choose shoes that don't match the color of my clothes," Soul said dryly, "but it seems like you don't care about that either."

Maka twitched. He saw that, and assumed reminding her of her bad sense for fashion probably hit a nerve. He didn't know anything about fashion. Only that suits made of velvet were incredibly silly and that wearing socks with sandals was an even greater crime.

It also caused rather smelly feet.

At this point, he really wasn't that sure anymore if he wanted to chase her away or take her up on her implied offer.

"Fine then, I just wanted to ask that maybe you be my partner, you are pretty nice I guess." Maka crossed her arms.

Weird. He just called her tone-deaf and told her that her choice of shoes suck, and now she wants to be his partner. Strange girl.

"Whatever then, okay, I guess. I'd rather talk about it tomorrow though, I still want to show you something before you start being too happy." He got up and walked towards her, still not sure what to make of her, but he could at least be a little polite, if not anything else. That probably included telling her his name, he concluded. "I'm Soul."

Maka just smiled and stretched her arm out like she wanted to shake his hand, but held it in a way as if she waited for him to give her some change. He looked at it for a moment before coming closer and taking it. What a weird way to shake someones hand.  
He could have lived without shaking her hand at all, if he was honest. If he had learned anything from his parents, then that handshakes are impersonal and a hollow gesture.

It was when he looked up to her face that it hit him.

It made sense, why she wasn't staring at him like he was a rare animal in a zoo.

That she hadn't yet commented on his eyes, his teeth or his _fucking hair._

And why she wasn't bothered by the bad lighting in the room, why she twitched awkwardly when he commented about her shoes not matching her dress.

Her eyes were closed.

Maka was blind.


	2. The Father, the Weapon and the Wardrobe

He had to admit, he was a little surprised.

After he endured the increasingly boring introductional class, he did indeed show Maka something. Actually, he didn't really know if he had to lead her by her hand, but she just strolled along next to him, and he was glad she didn't know that he tried to study her.

She dodged the people walking towards them, and not even objects were a problem for her, as if she wasn't blind at all. But she was, he was sure, he saw how she got handed the boring guidebook, and it was all written in braille. So apparently this school was prepared to take on students with visual discrepancies. It was strange for him.

And he also questioned why he half-agreed to partner with her without taking a closer look at her first. It wasn't her fault, he knew it, it was his for not thinking it through.  
He probably wouldn't have declined, he decided for himself.  
But he could not wrap his mind around why a school that mainly trains combatants puts a blind girl into a class for combatants, but while he saw her navigate around the city without a cane or any form of help at all (although she did grab his sleeve in way that was far too personal when they approached the school's stairs, she said something about how easy it is to trip on the way down), he somehow knew there was probably something up with her.

He would just ask later. Maybe when it wasn't awkward anymore.

Because, if Soul was honest with himself, he had never dealt with a blind person before, even if he tried his best to look unaffected. And his resolution to be as nonchalant as possible in this new life he had was hard to keep up while lots of uncomfortable questions popped up in his head.

Thirteen years of life sure weren't enough to prepare him for such a rather unusual partnership.

He had decided to play the piano for her in order to explain who he was and how he felt. What else would he do? He sure wasn't good at talking most of the time, and he knew it. And although he didn't like playing the _piano all that much _(the memory of their encounter in the music room the day before still made him cringe a little), and while he knew he wasn't _all that good, _it was at least something he could do.

Also, Soul was sure that at least she would not criticize him.

So he led her to this café where he knew he saw a piano earlier that week, and he casually asked why she would like to have him as a partner, because in his mind 'because you are nice' was not a valid reason. And she told him she signed up to be a scythe meister, even if her father protested against it, and that he was a scythe, and that's the reason. And maybe she didn't mind him all too much either.

And he was tolerable for a male.  
He knew he would need question _that _too, because it was fishy. But maybe he would just keep it to himself.

And after she commented on the place smelling like coffee and old wood and maybe a little mold, he started playing his little introduction for her, and she didn't mind it at all.

He decided he would stay with her, because she didn't mind.

On their way out, she walked into the door frame and he had to laugh about it.  
Because maybe she didn't know every corner of the city so perfectly.

* * *

"But..why _him_? Why not the nice girl with the ponytail I saw you talking to yesterday?" Maka's father, a tall man with red hair, wailed into his daughters face, and for now, he envied her for her lack of eyesight. Her father was producing a rather disgusting amount of mucus from every opening in his face, all while whining and wailing about these _awful _circumstances.

It had never been his aim to impress the man (he didn't know him, after all), but this was ridiculous, it wasn't like he was carrying the child of Satan in a tumor on his back.

"Just think about it, he will look at you, and maybe he will touch you while you are not looking!"

Soul had the small urge to remark that she was _never_ looking, but kept that to himself. He also tried to ignore the comment about him touching her – he had no desire to touch anyone, and certainly not in the way her father apparently suggested.  
He directed his attention away from the slimy mess her father was and filled out the form the lady on the desk had put out for him. It was bothersome to fill it out, most of it was written in the usual, dry bureaucratic tone no one understood.

And the first hurdle were the names.

Her father was still wailing when Soul interrupted him.

"Sorry to interrupt your display of whale noises there old man, but I need to know her full name."

"Whale noises! Did you hear that, he said your father is making _whale noises_!" came the gasping reply from the father "Right there, this attitude! I will kick you out of-"

"You kinda do make whale noises," Maka said "and you'll do nothing. I know you're good at that, you have done nothing for Mama too, right?"

She turned around to face Soul, who just felt a little out of place with the sheet of paper in his hand. He wasn't quite sure what he had just witnessed, but it surely would not be the last time this would happen.

"Just tell me your full name, I need to put it in here." He raised the paper and a second later he remembered that she couldn't see it anyway, thus awkwardly lowering it again.

Maka, who paid no more attention to the wailing mass of father that was writhing on the ground, just smiled and started spelling her name for him.

Albarn.

It sounded vaguely familiar, nothing he knew from home, but fresher. He couldn't put a finger on it though, so he just continued to put in information.

The best thing about this form was the face that once handed in, they could just leave this place and this mad father of hers.

On the ways down the stairs (she held on to his sleeve again), he allowed himself a question, one that he deemed innocent enough to not come off a nosy. 

"So, why did your father think he could kick me out of school?" he questioned while looking at the concentrated face she kept while walking down the stairs. Was she counting every single step?

"Hmm, what," her head jerked up a little, "oh, that's because he's Deathscythe, you know not a deathscythe, but the Deathscythe."

"Oh, okay." Soul continued a few steps before stopping abruptly. "Wait, what."

Maka almost stumbled, but caught herself before she fell. "I said he-"

"Yes – No, I heard that part. But..." he gave up. The whole conversation would probably boil down to 'you didn't' ask, anyway. "So, why _exactly_ do you want a scythe, again?"

She shrugged. "I want to make a better deathscythe than papa is."

Soul repressed a sigh and shrugged. "Did you every fall down these stairs?"

She looked thoughtful before answering. "A few times, but I also managed to get up and down already all by myself. I want to be able to do it all alone one day, I can do most things alone. I guess." she tilted her head to the left, and then to the right, "It's really one of the only things I have problems with. There are also certain tasks I don't want to do because I don't _see _the point in it." 

Soul looked down the stairs, and up again, and he figured that falling down must be really painful, but he thought there were probably enough people falling down the stairs, and their eyes were most likely intact. Hell, he almost fell down a few times because this construction of hell was so exhausting. Would he spend the rest of his time walking her up and down the stairs?

Hopefully not. She said she could do it by herself already, right?

He was also a little concerned about what was going to happen now. Weren't they supposed to find a place to stay? They were told that was required if partners were not of the same gender.

And what about the whole combat-thing? Hopefully he would not cut her legs off accidentally. He didn't even know what it was like to be wielded as a weapon, his experiences just extended to 'transform and fall to the ground'.

And living with a girl could be problematic. The only girls he had ever known were haughty, vain princesses he pointedly ignored when he saw them at one of the parties his parents held. He didn't want to have anything to do with them, their attitude alone pissed him off to some degree. Not that he would have ever said anything about it, dodging them was easier. No one would have listened to his complaints anyway.

...and how do blind people know what clothes they pull out of the wardrobe?

"We need to find a place to live!" she suddenly pointed out, as if reading his thoughts. "There are places that grant lowered rent to students, maybe we should ask there?

He shrugged. "Fine. Where though?"

They started walking down again, and he saw her continue her counting. She was counting, he was sure.

"There should be some brochures in my bag somewhere, they gave them to me at the desk." Maka just answered in a rather indifferent tone.

Of course she felt indifferent, because being handed brochures she couldn't read must have felt a little weird. The people who handed them out were either idiots or knew he had to read them, Soul concluded and just took the bag, ready to dig into it once they reached the bottom of the endless stairs.

Despite meeting just the other day, he started to think that it was not such a bad idea to partner with her. They felt okay with each other already, didn't they? Maybe it will at least be eventful.  
She didn't feel off like the other people hat felt to him, and that was probably good. Who knows.  
He'll get used to her lack of sight. It couldn't be that hard. Even if it meant that he would spend the rest of his life as a living crutch, at least it gave him something to do.  
And it was better than sitting at home and being a nobody.  
Maybe she would make him into the best crutch.  
It wouldn't be cool, just like being a nurse wouldn't be cool for him, but he took what he could get, and it would set him apart from the rest of his family.

* * *

The apartment was on the fifth floor, and he was concerned that it might not be the most ideal place, especially since there was no elevator. Soul was sure this would be like letting her walk on a wire over an abyss, and hearing that she fell down these awful stairs in front of school didn't make it better.

It had only been two weeks, and they were fine with each other. As long as he wasn't being stupid and received a book to his head.  
It was one of the things he learned quickly: make stupid comments, be intentionally rude, receive book to head.  
Most of the time she used the flat side, aiming it was easier, but there was one time where he felt the spine of some thick, heavy book dig into his skull.

Apparently she was not really satisfied with the way she looked. Could be because she didn't know what she looked like, he suspected, and just filed this reaction away in the depths of his brain.

It couldn't really hurt her if she didn't know, right?  
There was nothing wrong with the way she looks, he reckoned, she was twelve and hey, it's alright to be slender, and well, have a small chest.  
Probably better than being able to carry a tea tray on them, that might be uncomfortable.

Also she was twelve. And apart from her violent reaction, making her a little angry was a fun way to get attention from her.

He was happy to live in something that came close to a real home, even if it needed some work (he still couldn't believe he had so scrape mold off of one of the walls) and was not located ideally. She assured him, that, yes, it was okay, there was no need to worry about climbing stairs. He just had to give her a few days, and she would be skipping up and down!

The school dorm where he was located until they found lodging was not his favorite place, he didn't even bother to unpack his things when he was staying there. The guy in the next room was snoring like a buzz saw, the room itself was far too small, and he certainly didn't care to have the lights out at half past eight.

Maka apparently lived with her father. He asked her once where her mother was, she had just shrugged and told him that she wasn't around because she wasn't all that fond of her father anymore. But she insisted that she didn't need her mother to be around, because she could cook and clean and do everything she needs to care for herself, and to make sure that her father didn't starve because he wasn't able to do these things.

She would teach him how to cook, she said. And he wasn't quite sure how he had to imagine a blind girl cooking, but he was sure he needed to learn in order not to end up like her father.  
How did this guy even get his position?

They also met one of Maka's friends, a loud, obnoxious boy named Black*Star and his weapon, Tsubaki.

Black*Star and Maka apparently knew each other since they were little kids, and it was obvious from the way they behaved around each other, it was in the rather carefree way the boy bothered her and was not in any way daunted by the fact that she could not see him. And she was casually angry at him for _some reason_, or maybe just because. It stung a little to see them like this, and Soul just remembered that it was probably because he never really had friends.  
And Black*Star was loud. His first action after seeing the two ascend the stairs in front of the school was to pose on some part of the school front, spouting nonsense about greeting their god and that they should feel blessed by his presence in this very school.

He was ridiculous.

Soul liked him.

His partner was an older girl, and she seemed to vaguely know Maka as well, telling her meekly how happy she was that everything worked out for her in the end.  
Tsubaki was tall, and everything about her reminded him of his mother. Only in nice and with darker hair. His mind was obviously playing tricks on him.  
She was very likable, nothing she said was offensive or aggressive, and she had a very gentle way of speaking. She was friendly, and it was very obvious that she and Maka liked each other.

And then, something interesting happened.

Tsubaki and Maka were just talking about _something _(not that Soul cared much about girlish talk), and one of them giggled.

"Is it okay?" Maka asked, her tone was a little unsteady, "We really don't know each other that well."

Tsubaki smiled in return, even if Maka couldn't see it. "I think it's a very nice way to get to know someone."

"Oh, alright then!" And Maka raised her hands and started to feel Tsubaki's face, running her fingertips and palms over her skin, her nose and even her lips. She giggled a little the moment the eyelashes brushed her fingers, and then she felt the thick, black hair. Maka looked like she was curious, and started feeling Tsubaki's hair, ending it by running her hand over the long ponytail. "Your face feels nice, you must be really pretty."

Soul had just watched to procedure, a little confused by it. Did she just identify Tsubaki just by touching her face and told her she looks pretty? "How can you tell?" It just slipped from his mouth.

Black*Star was standing next to him with a seriously wide, fat grin on his face. Or maybe he looked like that all the time. Who knew.

"She does it all the time, can't you tell? She could tell my godly vi...vi..visa...face apart from the common ones by the time we were four! I get that some of my greatness must have rubbed off on her." Black*Star's grin widened, and Soul could swear the sun made his teeth gleam in the light.

"Right." he just said, not yet in the mood to play along.

"Don't listen to him! I just practiced it on his face back then, nothing more!" Maka shoved Black*Star aside, and Tsubaki looked somehow apologetic. It looked like she already knew this kind of thing. "I haven't touched your face yet, would you like me to?"

He had no idea what kind of answer was diplomatic and still a good way to decline.  
He didn't want to. He had no desire to be touched by her, or anyone. And not in that way, she would only find something that was off and then she would not want him anymore, right? There was no way he would let her touch his face.

"No way, I don't want anyone to grope my face!"

Not very diplomatic.

"Oh..oh okay, then not. It's no problem." Her reply sounded a little hurt and a little suspicious, but she didn't insist. At least for now and concerning this topic.

"Oh..Maka, I wanted to ask, are your parents Japanese? You name is very nice." Tsubaki attempted to bridge over from an uncomfortable silence, she sounded rather nervous.

And with that, Maka and Tsubaki started a conversation in Japanese and the awkward moment was over.

Just thinking back to it made Soul feel uncomfortable, and he thought he might have offended her a little. It was more than a week ago at that point, and he still found her way of getting to know people's face a little unsettling. And still, she had done it to many of their new classmates, and funny enough, none of them found it problematic. They were nice and friendly, and none were put off by having a blind meister among them.  
Well, for now she was still alive, and until now the only thing they had done were theoretical lessons on building good relationships with a partner, keeping a low profile in public, and an introduction of the staff that would be teaching their class.

The physical training started a little later.

And Soul wanted to die the instant he noticed how frayed he felt after every lesson. And it was only physical education. The real combat training started out a little different for them.

But physical education was bad enough. He wasn't big on sports, and track wasn't his favorite, as he figured out the painful way. He would have to participate, even if his results didn't matter as much as Maka's, or so it was explained to him.

And she could run, it was almost infuriating. Mainly for those who thought they would have an easy race against 'the blind chick'. But slowly it was made clear why she was taken as a combatant, and not shoved away into some NOT-class.

She never bumped into anyone or even do as much as brush them. As was like she could sense every person surrounding her, and that made her special and interesting.

She replied to his questioning silence that it had always been that way, and she didn't know what it was. She was clearly blind, she wasn't able to see a thing, but she knew exactly where everyone was and even worked her way through crowds without effort.

* * *

He wasn't sure if he was doing it right, but there was no way he could have known he would be doing this kind of thing.

Maka's father had (not without much moaning, toxic swearing and a fair amount of threats) moved her things over from her old home into their new apartment. While Soul found absolutely gratifying to watch the man carry up the boxes all five floors, he was still faced with _this._

At least the old man had been _nice _enough to assemble her wardrobe again in her new room (Soul had left the bigger one to her, in hopes that his would not end up feeling like a shoe box), but then he was on his own. Well, not completely, as he noticed, Maka was sitting on her bed and unpacked her books. 

"I don't want to do this. Can't you get Tsubaki for this?" he buried his face in his hands. Her father knew this was coming. And it was probably the reason why he left with an expression of Schadenfreude on his face. "This is just..really not cool, at all." 

Maka looked a little irritated, and he figured it must be because he had been repeating the same sentence for the last thirty minutes. Somehow, it served her right. She could get Tsubaki, right? 

"It will not make you sick to touch a skirt, you know?" she folded one of the cardboard boxes together with an expertise one would not expect. "Just stop whining about it." 

Of course it wouldn't, but he felt like they were not in a stage of friendship where sorting the other's clothing by color was a common thing to do. He understood why it needed to be done, so she knew what the was wearing without being able to see it. But why did he have to do it? Nowhere in the contract did they mention this kind of thing. 

"No but-" he shot a glance to the clock "-but I have to go to my driving lessons, right? You understand that, I know." Soul was quick to jump up and speed out of the room, away from the small pile of pastels and bold colors, and out of the door. 

He figured Tsubaki would be there once he came back, and those driving lessons were important. He was quite happy to be able to take them without being the appropriate age. It would come in handy, he knew it already.


	3. Compact

She shifted him around a little. The weight was distributed in a rather interesting way, like there was more on one end than a blade. He wasn't heavy, that was not the problem, quite the opposite. He almost weighted nothing, but one end had a lot more...substance.

"I think you're holding me upside down, you know," echoed from the blade. She wasn't able to see the confused expression Soul was wearing, but she was able to guess from his tone alone.

"I know, I'm not dumb! I'm just trying to figure something out, you are a little top-heavy, you know!" Maka bit back, she could hear the other students around her do the same thing.

The whole concept was to get used to your weapon, and that was what she was doing. It was a little more complicated to handle a long weapon without any eyesight, so she could see why he was a little confused about it. Still, he _was_ very top-heavy! She remembered holding here father once, and he wasn't nearly as unbalanced. She slid the pole around until she reached the head part with here hands and started examining it.

"And..what are you doing now?" Soul still sounded confused.

Maka started feeling around something that reminded her of a pipe, it was wider than the pole. It had a screw head on top, and...was that an eye? On both sides?

It was an eye! She could actually feel it move around and it had a lid too. But it was firm like metal and not squishy, actually it felt kind of abstract, she wasn't really sure how the whole concept made sense. It didn't bother her too much though.

"Uh..what." his echoing, metally voice sounded very unsure, like he had not expected her to poke around on his 'eye'.

"Was it weird? I just wanted to figure out what's going on with that part," she placed her hands back on the pole, "I didn't expect to poke an eye, though."

"Whatever, it felt more like you were poking me somewhere on the back of my head. Don't cut yourself." he replied and she could hear his voice shift back to a rather nonchalant tone. "There is a guy over there who transforms into a bouquet."

Maka had figured out by now that he was quite an expert on making 180 degree turns when it came to subjects to talk about. Especially if he felt awkward with the previous topic, and sometimes she felt like she needed to pry a little, but for now, she wouldn't. Also, someone transforming into a bouquet of all things was quite curious. There were odd weapons, like pots and lamps, she even heard of mirrors and other household objects. If she was honest, she wanted to see it, but that was quite a pointless thing to hope for.

"Is it really an eye?" she questioned, "I mean, next to your blade. Is it an eye?"

"Hm," Soul was obviously thinking. It was quite clear that he didn't really know how to describe it, or maybe... "I don't know. You should hold me in front of a mirror."

Maka giggled. So he just didn't know himself! How could he, he didn't have a neck to bend and look at himself right now. "I have a compact, if you would like."

"Why do you have one?" he blurted out, and at the same time, his voice shriveled a little, like he noticed that it was an insanely inappropriate question. And it was, but she decided to not say anything quite yet. For someone who (according to his own words, after she pressed them out of him like one would press an orange) never dealt with a blind person before, he was holding up well. And that was more than she would have asked for, because in the beginning, she feared he would just give up after noticing what was going on with her.

"I use it to clip band-aids in there," Maka answered, after a second of silence "it's not as bulky and they don't get lost that way."

She pulled a tiny compact mirror out of her skirt pocket and upon opening it, a handful of band-aids became visible, small ones, the kind meant for fingers and small cuts. Storing them away, she held out the mirror. "Just say if it's pointing in the right direction."

"It's alright..um..it is an eye. I can see from there, but I didn't know it looked like an eye." his voice sounded weird, like it was strange for him to actually see himself in the mirror.

"But doesn't it work like an eye?" she moved the mirror to the other side of him, and wondered what it must look like to see her doing something like this. Or what it was like to look into a mirror.

"Not really, I mean...it moves and stuff? It moves if I focus on something, but it feels more like...like a security camera, but.." he stopped suddenly, "..eh, forget what I said."

"What? Why?" Maka closed the mirror and stuffed it back into her pocket. "What happened?"

"I just saw the pupil widening. Still doesn't hurt in my eye if you poke it." he sighed and there was a moment of silence.

She hear someone howling somewhere to the right, like someone accidentally cut themselves. Then there was another voice, hysterically apologizing, and then there was Nygus, one of the two teachers, saying something.  
To the left, someone went into a sneezing fit, and somewhere else, Black*Star was howling out something about his pathetic underlings. Above her, she hear some kind of bird screech, maybe one of the resident vultures. They were not ashamed to hang out around town anymore.

"At least it's unusual?" she shrugged.

"Not as unusual as a bouquet." he just mellowly replied.

* * *

She had obliged to his wish and not touched his face. Sometimes, he would take her hand if needed (not that often), and she held onto his sleeve when they climbed the giant stairs in front of school. Maka didn't need his help to ascend the stairs to their apartment, the handrail proved to be enough to teach her how many steps there were, and how steep they were, she was able to hop up and down all five floors without any help (she suspected that Soul was skeptical of her carefree behavior, but ignored it).

Then they were standing in front of the dummies used for training. Sid was standing there with them, conveniently positioned behind one of the dummies to give her a target she could actually perceive. The dummy alone wouldn't do, and she felt a little miserable because the teachers were going out of their way to make sure she received to kind of training in targeting she needed. And of course she couldn't practice on living targets just yet, it would be suicide.

So giving the dummy the feel of a living thing would do.

"Don't think about me, just hit the target!" she heard Sid's voice right in front of her.

That was the kind of thing he said a few moments before, that she shouldn't think about him too much, and just hit the target. He was sure it was the right way to do, and that he is the kind of man that wants to help bring out the best in his students.

Now that she thought about it, he often emphasized what kind of man he was.

He's been doing it as long as she could think back, she met him sometimes when her father took her to school.

Shaking the thoughts off, she focused on the direction the weird tingle of his presence came from. Hitting it directly would be pointless, she wanted to slice through the dummy, and it was stationed in front of him. Just a little bit. She noticed that the pole of Soul's scythe transformation felt warm in her hands, like it had blood rushing through it. Maybe that was the case? She wasn't sure, she read a lot about the physiology of weapons, but she didn't remember reading about them having body heat.

She shoved her thoughts aside and stepped forward, towards her target, bringing down the bladed side of Soul a few steps in front of Sid.  
Something fell to the ground with a dull thumping sound, and after that came a moment of silence.

"Well done, diagonally through the torso!" she heard Sid say, "Now you only need to be able to do that to a moving target!"

"Oh..um, thank you." Maka just pressed through her teeth while she felt Soul's form dissolve from her grip.

"Now, you two should go home too, everyone else left already. I'm the kind of man who would keep his students until the late evening."

Judging from the sound, Sid took off with the cut torso of the dummy, leaving the two behind.

Maka was unsure how to feel about this, because she knew what _'a moving target_' probably meant for her, since the moving dummies were right out (unless a very athletic person without any will to live would sprint behind it). And while it made her giddy in a rather unacceptable, dangerous way, she had her doubts whether she was ready or not.

"You okay?" Soul poked her without putting any kind of determination behind it. "Stop spacing out."

"Yes..no. Can I ask a question?" she responded.

"You just, did, you know." he sounded just a little bit impatient, she reckoned that was because he was hungry. If she had figured something out about him that wasn't so personal that he kept it to himself, it was the fact that he was like a living trash compactor, he basically breathed all the food away she put in front of him. He really ate almost anything, except beets. And he also said he doesn't want to eat innards. That was okay for her. She didn't like those either.

"Nobody likes a smart ass, you know," she huffed, "just...the Demon Bouquet you talked about last time? What did he look like?"

Well, it wasn't like she wanted to know what it looked like, it was kind of irrelevant information for her. But making him believe that she marveled about something as bizarre as a man turning into a bouquet, it would at least be a distraction and mask her doubts about what was to come a little.

Also, a bouquet was still an odd weapon form.

"Uuh...he was tall, buff..um, tan skin. And his hair was in a very tiny, tight ponytail. Happy now?" he sounded almost offended when describing the man.

Maka chuckled.

"I mean, what did he look like as a weapon?"

She heard him sigh in a very expressive, fake way. He wanted to sound like he was annoyed, but didn't really succeed in doing so. It was more..._comedic_, than anything. He also sounded like a yawning puppy. _Certainly_ not the way he wanted to appear to anyone.

"He looked flowery."


	4. Better Than A Sharp Stick In The Eye

Travel by train must have been the most uneventful thing to happen to a blind person, Soul concluded after watching Maka, who was desperately trying to read, but gave up after noticing that the unusual rocky ride just wasn't good for reading. After some time, she removed her fingers from her book and threw it back into her bag rather unceremoniously. And she looked like she was really frustrated, too. Well, if he was honest with himself (or maybe he was really good at lying to himself), he felt rather uncomfortable, too. It was not only the fact that they got thrown into a (pre-chosen) mission way before any of their classmates had to go on one, he also felt that the advice to 'keep your eyes open' sounded much nicer in theory than it did in practice. Of course he had to keep his eyes open, he was the one with functioning eyes!  
Which opened up the next question, how was this whole thing going to work? He wasn't really sure how to keep himself together in a real battle, it's one thing to oppose wooden dummies on the training grounds, but reals enemies? He could hold his form in a relaxed atmosphere, but he had never tried to keep it up under pressure.

Hell, last night he sneezed and tore directly through his mattress! And his sheets. And all of the bedding. And he also casually chose not to tell Maka about this massacre.

Soul was nervous, and he knew it, but there was no way he would admit this to someone who had more reasons to be nervous. He just felt like a baby if he compared his situation to hers.

The train rattled forward towards their destination. Maka was sitting opposite of him, her head tilted back and her eyes slightly open.  
So her eyes were green. He had not known until now, she kept her eyes shut around him.

"Hey," he poked her leg with the tip of his shoe, "Maka. I have a question."

She closed her eyes and nodded, a faint "Mhm" escaping from her throat. Was she sleepy?

"Why do you keep your eyes shut?" he tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, and maybe he succeeded. He didn't know.

"Oh, that." Maka sighed, "It's because most people find it creepy that my eyes just stare into space. I have full control over the muscles and the lids and all the other things, it's just...really hard to focus on something if there is nothing. So I just close them, it's a habit now. Nobody wants to see my thousand-yard-stare."

"So you only open your eyes whenever you're alone?" If he was honest right now, he just wanted to get distracted from his incoming doom. Who knew if the thing they would encounter had nasty claws or something equally deadly.

"Mhm, it's a little exhausting to keep them closed all the time," She leaned back again, "but I also can't keep them shut if I'm really tired, so you might want to look away in that case."

"Okay then." He also leaned back and left her to her thoughts. It was quite obvious she had a lot of them right now, and most probably were not centered around opening or closing her eyelids. They were slightly open again. And she was right, her eyes gave the impression as if she wasn't quite there, staring straight into nothingness.

Soul didn't find it creepy at all. He just thought it was curious, like she could see something he couldn't.  
But of course, there was nothing she saw, and he knew it. It didn't make him feel better.

* * *

Their destination was a small town just about two hours from Death City. As there were no missions that placed them even closer to the city, this was the best thing they could get.  
And the place was seriously run down, like no one lived here anymore. But of course there were people, the train would not stop there if it was a ghost town, and he saw the personnel of the train station.

Maybe the moonlight was playing tricks on him.

"The air feels really wrong here, did you notice? It's...dense and feels old." Maka was holding onto his sleeve while they were walking toward the center. "I also feel like _something _is going to happen soon."

She was right, the air did feel dense. And old, it was like they were stuck in a time capsule. Breathing also put a stale taste into his mouth, it was like the oxygen was literally out of date.  
It was bad. He could a faint sense of terror somewhere between his lungs and his stomach, and he wondered what was wrong with this place.

Soul felt a tug on his sleeve.

"Shouldn't you transform? I mean, unless you want to tackle the monster yourself."

She had a point there. He definitely didn't want to be squishier than needed by the time they encountered the thing that cause the air to taste like really old...something.

So he did.

And his weapon form was floppy, hanging from Maka's grip like a wet noodle.

"Are you alright, Soul? This feels a little...unusual." Maka's voice was a weird mix between worry, confusion and maybe a little bit of amusement, he couldn't tell. Her face said she was confused, and he tried to imagine what it feels like to hold a wobbly scythe in his hand – all while being ashamed.

He had to take action or he would never be allowed to live it down, he just knew it. So what to do? Soul decided to think about nice things, even if there was a huge lack of nice things in his life. He just filled his thoughts with daisies and ducklings until he noticed his form straightening.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he gave back, feeling unbelievably cool for a second – until he remembered that just a second ago, he was impersonating a bladed spaghetti.

Maka was silent for a terrifyingly long second. "..okay...just...don't go limp again, it felt weird."

She shifted her concentration back to the task at hand. "We should either search the area or wait until it finds us."

Searching? He would already be satisfied if she managed to avoid running into a wall, after all this this place was completely foreign to her.

"I wouldn't really know where to start searching...we weren't given a whole lot of info, just that it's rather weak." she continued while walking across the central plaza. It was strange, this place looked more and more like it would belong into a European town in the early 1900s. Soul could also swear the whole place was different just a second ago, a little less..old.

"So you think it's close? We should be on our guard, right?" He questioned, it felt almost like the metallic twang of his voice echoed from the walls. But strangely, there was no echo. There should be an echo! "Maka, did you..."

"Sh! Yes, I noticed! You may find that weird because I can't see it, but," she moved into a defensive position, placing the pole in front of her, "I think it's been here all along – no, not really, I think we're inside it's body! The surroundings without echo, and the dense air – it's all around us!"

He did suspect that the whole thing was connected to the enemy – the corrupted soul, as they were called – but he would never have guessed that it was part of it's _body. _How did she even figure it out?

"So, what are we going to do, tickle its uvula?" Soul blurted, "I did not come here with the intention to get digested! How did you even figure it out?"

"Will you just stop? We' re not going to get eaten! The only person eating today will be you!" she exclaimed in determined voice.

Yes, the eating part. He had not thought about it yet, and it possibly wasn't the right moment to dwell on it, but how does one eat a soul? He'll have to see.

* * *

Everything was silent when the _thing_ shot straight out of a wall. Now, Soul knew that the targets were human at one point, and he didn't know if this was it's true form, but it looked more like a disgusting, mangled dog that got into a rotary iron than a human. It was covered in some kind of..goo? Or was it just gore dripping through it's skin? He didn't want to know, and he thought it a blessing that he wasn't able to smell anything right now. Unlike Maka, she started to retch the moment the bad odor wafted over to her.

Soul could feel her pulse against him, even through her gloves. She was either terrified or excited, and he doubted the latter.

The monster raced towards them, sickly green saliva dripping from it's mouth. It was clear why it was an easy target, it acted more on instinct than intellect. Soul wanted to shut his eyes the moment Maka dodged the attack. It wanted to bite her, and now it landed on the ground, readying itself for the next attack.  
It was absolutely repulsing. The creature scraped it's claws over the unreal cobblestones on the ground, the grating sound was like a drill in Soul's ear. The green slime from it's mouth dripped to the ground, forming disgusting puddles and then they...disappeared?

That was bad.

"Listen, I think parts of it can just disappear into the surroundings again, at least the stuff from it's mouth just did." Soul quickly pointed out, remembering that despite the impressive dodging-action she just demonstrated, she could not see what the thing did. Or maybe she did know because of the way it appeared before. He didn't care.

"So, that's why it is called the Shadow Creeper?" Maka gritted her teeth, and suddenly the creature lunged at her again.

He watched her while she kicked one of her heavy boots into the things snout, green slime flying everywhere. For someone with malfunctioning eyes, she knew pretty well where to aim.

The monster yelped before bouncing back.

And then Maka let out a pained shriek.

The monster had buried it's fangs into her calf, oozing the green goo all over it.

Soul didn't even have time to say anything, as he suddenly felt a strange sensation when his blade went through the forelegs of the Creeper. It fell to the ground and blood started gushing from the stumps.

"You only got the forelegs," he uttered, "are you alright? It look...eh, disgusting."

"I don't know it feel st-" her reply was cut off by a strange sound, followed by silence. "Soul, it just...disappeared, right?"

"It..the legs too, be careful." If he felt nervous before, he figured that it was nothing compared to now. This was new, a situation he had never experienced before, and probably also closer to death than everything he had ever done in his life, even if it wasn't that much. He would press the fact that thirteen years don't give you a whole lot of room the experience life-changing situations like this, especially since you spend a good part of it defecating into diapers. He would press it, if this situation wasn't extremely dangerous and starting a conversation about how he feels wouldn't be highly inappropriate, also, nobody cared.

The area was silent and dark. No creaks came from the old window frames. He looked around, utilizing his eyes, silently wondering how weapons without eyes were able to see.

In the middle of the dark plaza was old, mossy fountain without water. The kitschy statue of an ugly, chubby Cupid was sitting on top of it, holding a shiny, golden bow. Two or three rotting benches were next to the ugly fountain, completely unusable.  
The surrounding buildings all started to show signs of decay, and the grubby windows almost looked like eyes, as if the enemy was watching through the glassy panels. It made Soul shudder a little.  
The roofs looked like they were about to collapse, so maybe it was a good idea to not get up there, not if Maka valued her bones.  
On the north end of the plaza stood a building that looked like an old hotel, fake, roman pillars in front of it, and a slightly more intact wall. His eyes could make out the term 'Hotel' on the rotting sign on a wall, so at least his guess was right.  
All the streets and alleys were filled with pitch black, impenetrable darkness. It looked like some kind of fog, only more solid.

The Creeper obviously wanted to keep them here or die.

"I don't know where it could appear next, everything just starts to look shoddier every minute," he said, before looking down towards her calf, "what the..something is..uh..wrong with your leg."

"What? What is it? Is this why it's hurting so much?" she cried, "What's happening?"

He really had no idea what to tell her. A net of black..veins (?) was appearing all over her calf, almost like the pattern on a turtle shell. Aside from that, the bite mark was still oozing green juice, and it certainly looked painful.

"How do I put it.." he started, but didn't get very far. The moment he spoke, black sinews shot out of the ground under them, instantly connecting to her leg and (he hoped that he was wrong with this deduction) apparently also going inside it, too. The thing lifted her into the air while she gripped Soul tightly, repressing a shriek. Her weird sense for approaching lifeforms had failed her on that one.

"Bloody hell, Maka! Cut them, cut the tentacles!" he shouted, before he felt himself quaking when the thing slammed them face-first into a crumbling wall. And then it repeated the same procedure on the other side of the square.

It felt like an eternity until she reacted to his shouting and until she cut the sinews off.  
The sound certainly wasn't pleasant, but better than hearing how a person gets slammed into a wall repeatedly.  
The appendages recoiled into the ground.

"We have a problem there Soul," Maka panted, wiping some blood from her face, "it appears that no matter how much we cut it, it always comes back. It's like we aren't attacking the real body, just..just replacement it generate from it's own matter! The body must be somewhere else altogether!"

"Didn't you say this whole place is the body? Wouldn't it be hurting itself by waving you around like that?" He questioned, leaving out the topic of 'and why isn't your neck broken from that?'.

"Don't ask me, I can't see what exactly it's doing! Do you see anything suspicious? It must have placed it's weak point somewhere else, to mislead any attacker!" Maka pressed through her teeth, while getting back up on her feet again. She probably didn't want to repeat this experience.

So Soul started to look around again. Maybe it was the disgusting statue on the fountain? The bow _was_ suspiciously golden.

"Try the fountain, there's a very..._special_ statue on it. Uh, just go straight ahead until you hit it and then let's just smash it." Even if it wasn't what they were searching for, at least the Cupid would be dust.

Maka quickly walked forward until her feet hit the fountain, obviously she was aware that the creature could show up any time. She tested the material before shifting Soul in her grip and slicing right through it, beheading the Cupid in the process.

There was no reaction from the surroundings, but Soul felt a little bit of a personal triumph.

"That..that wasn't it, it all feels the same." Maka exhaled in a rather disappointed matter. "There must be something else."

Soul tried to scout something else, but there was just rubble from the buildings, and the hotel on the north end.  
His eyes widened in realization as he looked at the hotel again.  
He was certain, that must be it.

"Listen, there is a hotel if you turn to the left and go straight ahead. It has a large, illuminated clock on the top end of the highest story, It looks like it doesn't belong here. We need to get it, I bet, that's it!" He was quite proud of himself and his optical abilities.

"Right." Maka broke into a sprint, at least as fast as she could, her leg was still in bad shape and oozing stuff everywhere.

And _it _was following them again, again in the shape of the malformed dog. And it was fast, he could have sworn that they would make it close enough to the hotel to get up before the creature could catch up, but it was running with incredible speed.

"I don't think we can make it in time!" Maka yelled while running with Soul on her shoulder. "Say, Soul, do you get motion sick easily?"

Why was she asking that kind of thing? Her pace wasn't _that_ unsteady. In fact, for an injured person, she was holding up better than expected.

"No? Why the hell are you asking that kind of-" he was cut off suddenly.

"Can you see the clock? Is it right ahead?" she questioned, her breath was running out.

"Yes, just a little upwards if you tilt your head up a little! Why are you asking when we're about to-" yet again, he was cut off, but this time because he could suddenly not feel her hands anymore, and because he was spinning around madly.

His (apparently demented) meister had thrown him right at the clock.

The beast was rushing towards her while his involuntary flight felt like ages.  
Would it be a new record to have your meister die on the first mission?

But before the creature cut embed it's teeth in Maka, he heard the (strangely organic) material of the clock crunch and squish when his blade pierced through it and lodged itself tightly into the strangely meaty material.

Suddenly, the monster behind Maka dissolved into ashes, and then, the windows of the buildings shattered, vomiting the disgusting green onto the street. And unfortunately, all over Maka.  
The whole scene started to dissolve and make place for a completely different, more city-like neighborhood, without fountains, or decaying urban constructs. The whole thing just dissolved into soot and ashes, until only the hotel was still standing.  
And without warning, it dissolved, bundled up and revealed the glowing soul of the Shadow Creeper.

Soul just dropped to the ground in a rather unceremonious fashion.

The whole dark plaza was gone.

Only the green slime on the streets remained, and of course, the slime that stuck to Maka.

* * *

He just held the glowing orb in his hands, unsure what to do with it.

So he just shot Maka a questioning look, before remembering that it would not help. But at least she was looking perfectly stupid in her green slime coating.  
So stupid that he could not repress a laugh.

"It feels awful you know." she said dryly.

"Probably as awful as being chucked around." he cackled, only to feel the flat side of a book make contact with the back of his head. Where did she even get it? "Ugh, I thought I was going to die, just let me have a little fun."

"I'm sure you did." Maka pushed her bangs out of the way and sighed.

Soul looked at the soul in his hand. What now? They should probably get this done and clean her up before someone would be able to spot him cannibalizing this thing.

"So, do I just eat it?" he questioned, "They just said we should take in the soul, not how. "

"I guess so?" Maka shrugged.

"But I guess they say a lot of thing, just like 'this is an easy target'. How was that thing human once, can you explain that?" Soul cautiously poked the soul, and it wobbled like jelly.

"I don't know what it looked like, but..maybe it has been corrupted for a very long time and changed a lot because of that? I can just ask if we get back. Will you eat it now? We need to get moving." She tapped her foot as if in a hurry. Well, maybe they were.

"Calm down, I'm working on it." he was a little too proud to tell her that eating this thing felt like a challenge to him, and for some reason, he thought that it would be easier if she was actually looking at him.

But she wasn't, and so he just grabbed the soul and stuffed it into his mouth, which instantly started to drip saliva because of the overload.  
Chewing was no use, it just bounced back. He decided to just swallow it instead, nearly choking, but getting the job done.

"So, how do you feel?" Maka inquired, curiosity swinging in her voice.

"Like a cannibal. Not all that bad. But not different, either." He shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He had yet to think about what he would wear once he shed this uniform, Maka had already decided apparently. Or maybe the stuff she wore was just a random assortment from her closet.

"Ew, seriously, don't say things like that." she sputtered before turning around and limping a few steps.

"Wrong direction." Soul noted, "Maybe you should also hold on to me, or you'll break a leg or something."

Maka huffed something in Japanese before linking her arm with his. "We should give a call as soon as we find a usable window."

While they were slowly walking towards the station, he kept an eye open for a shop window. It was then that he noticed that Maka was still covered in drying slime.

Needless to say, he wasn't looking forward to the ride home.


	5. They Carry Their Houses On Their Backs

She was sure this wasn't how normal people behaved towards blind people (especially after a fight that only happened a few days ago and could have killed them both), but she was ready to chalk it up to his repressed curiosity and the fact that most of the time when he asked questions, they were mostly innocent ones. And beside that, she knew how people usually behaved once they knew about her 'condition' (she hated this word). They either started to avoid her suddenly, thought she wasn't only blind but also stupid (they completed this assumption by talking to her very slowly and loudly, in case she wasn't only blind, but also brain-damaged) or they dropped every last bit of good behavior their mother taught them and suddenly became experts for all things related to blindness.

Soul behaved (to her surprise, but she thought that this might be the case from the moment they met) a little differently. As already stated, he asked innocent questions, and other than that he wasn't very talkative (he wasn't very talkative in general). He was obviously careful with what he did and said, and it was quite clear that he didn't want to act stupid around her. But to her surprise, he quickly developed a non-verbal way of figuring things out about her, right after they got back from their encounter with the Shadow Creeper.

She'd been injured on her calf and was not allowed to participate in physical activities for a while after the remnants of the tentacles had been pulled out of her skin and everything was tightly bandaged.  
So aside from the usual lessons at school, she suddenly had a lot of free time. Instead of sitting on the sidelines while the others were forced to train, she (and Soul too, who was a bit too joyful about it) were usually sent home for the day, packed with written instructions on training. Maka was actually very bored. A part of her was still a little angry about the mix-up with the difficulty of their first mission. It wasn't like she wanted an especially easy challenge, no, that wasn't it. Treading on eggshells around her was something that she couldn't stand. At all.

She was mostly angry because she should have known that something wasn't right about this mission. The missing info about the form the creature took should have been enough evidence to her.  
She had noticed it the moment they were on the train. Maybe she didn't question it because it was a special case, they were sent on a mission long before their classmates would go on one. It was possible that she underestimated the difficulty herself, even if only subconsciously.

Or who know, maybe it was a test if she was really fit for the overall task of hunting corrupted souls. Or someone someone didn't trust the cripple to do something normal? But that kind of thinking went a bit too far, even for her.

She knew it was nonsense, but the thoughts lingered in her head, even after she pushed them far away into the furthest corner of her brain.

She had no intention to ever let them out of there.

* * *

So, the day after the mission was one of the rare, rainy ones. Maka liked to sound of the rain, not only because it rarely happened in the desert. She liked most sounds. Hearing the world around her work normally was strangely soothing to her, and even if she couldn't see it, she liked that she could hear it better than other people.

While the weather was still quiet, Soul had hurried off to his driving lessons. He would probably be dripping wet once he returned, and miserable too – like most people would be when they got caught in the rain.

They certainly hadn't known each other for a long time, but there were some basic things she noticed about him.

Soul was a very tired person. Not only did he sleep a lot and enjoyed it, he also sounded tired most of the time, at least when he wasn't committing shenanigans with Black*Star. Maka actually thought that he is faking the constant tired tone, just too keep up a certain grade of nonchalance, because he also tried his best to sound bored and uninterested most of the time.

She was really sure that it was just mask to keep up an image of coolness – she noticed it after knowing him for 15 seconds. And she was convinced that most other people noticed it too, but were just too polite to mention it. It was a really bad act. One that was equally annoying funny, it was just priceless to see him build up a social mask nobody wanted to take serious, but mostly, it made her feel somehow bad for him, and it annoyed her to see someone do things like this to themselves. Maka longed to figure out what made him the way he was, but she also felt like it was inappropriate to ask.

He also liked food., it was almost like he inhaled it. She was sure that his body was preparing for some major growth spurts (she had stopped believing that these things might ever happen to her), but he probably also just liked food.

Soul was also an incredibly clean person when it came to hygiene – the mere thought of body odor freaked him out (much to her amusement), and she could always count on him to smell like a meadow on a foggy spring morning – it was actually a welcome change from the sickening, alcoholic smell her father carried around (accompanied by bad aftershave).

And there was also his interesting way of showing how curious he was, as she discovered after the mission.

* * *

And there it was. A usually, but rainy day. She was contained at home, with her fingers in a book, and he was away on his driving lesson. Maka wasn't quite sure what he was learning to drive – she just hoped it was nothing too outrageous. There was the faint, oily smelly that accompanied him when he got back and stepped through the front door, but nothing more.

And on that day, she expected a rather foul mood from him when he got back, but she was wrong, he was actually rather excited, but what for?

Maybe he'd been able to smash another statue of Cupid.  
That still gave her strange feelings.

"The rain sounds pretty harsh," she just halfheartedly said, not looking forward to whatever he might reply. She didn't even remove the fingers from her book, "just don't drip all over the floor, will you."

It was obvious that he wasn't listening when his footsteps made beeline towards her. "I'm not made from sugar – hold out your hands, okay?"

Why would he ask for that, was he trying to pull a prank on her? He spent far too much time with Black*Star, she didn't rule out that he had a bad influence on him. Maka was really in no mood for practical jokes involving rainwater and soaked socks.

"Why would I? Do you owe me money, are you going to give it back to me in change so my hands overflow?" She questioned, his behavior was very, very suspicious, and the vibes his was giving off were more than weird.

"Because it's nothing bad? I'm not going to put wet socks into your hands. Seriously, just do it."

Where did those uncanny psychic abilities come from? Perhaps she wasn't able to hide her thoughts as well as she thought she could. Maybe her face was easy to read, she's never know, though.

"Fine," Maka held out her hands after putting the book away, "but I won't forgive you if it's anything disgusting."

Even if she deemed him possibly trustworthy, she still had her suspicions regarding the male kind of human.  
Suddenly, she felt something soft and damp on her palm, and it started moving slowly.

"So?" he inquired.

"It's an animal, isn't it? It feels...wet." Maka felt how the small thing started to move around. It tickled her skin a little and felt soft, cold, and maybe a bit slimy. It was stuck to her skin, its movements a clear sign of confusion about the strange, new surroundings.

"It's a snail. Have you never touched a snail before?" Soul questioned, his voice sounded awfully confused.

As a matter of fact, she had never touched a snail before, no one every had the idea to put an animal as small and common as a snail on her hand. Dogs, cats, she knew how they felt, but not something as ordinary as a snail. It felt a little too foreign for her. But she knew what a snail was! She understood the basic concept behind snails!

"No," she replied dryly, "how did you even get one? I really don't think they are common in deserts."

She was born here, and she didn't know. Perhaps she wasn't as familiar with snails as she wanted to be.

"Um..it was just there on a bush. This place is more like a greenhouse anyway, maybe there's a weather machine hidden somewhere in the school, in one of the janitor closets."

Maka heard him peel of off his wet jacket. The tiny snail was gliding around aimlessly on her palm.

"So..you really never touched a snail before?"

Maka felt irritation creep over her face.

"No, you might as well ask me if I could do calligraphy! What's so strange about it?"

Soul appeared to hesitate a little after that reply, and she knew it probably came out a little meaner than needed, but it was just the part of her that wished to be able to do whatever she liked to do, and that included not only touching snails, but also seeing what she was touching.

"What does it feel like?"

"Huh?" Maka lifted her head in confusion. What?

"The snail, what does it feel like?" Soul asked again.

So that was what it was about. He wanted some insight, but he didn't know how to ask for it directly. It made sense to her, he as just getting into the habit of asking for things, it seemed. Again, she wondered what exactly happened to him to make him this way. Maybe he assumed that she would just tell him what it was like when he put the creature on her hand?

"It's soft. Its underside tickles whenever it moves, it makes some kind of motion to move forward. And it's also a little slimy, but not too much so. I actually think it feels nice, in a way." She sighed. "Do you like snails?"

A moment of silence followed. Did she catch him off guard?

"Hm," he hummed, "I think they don't have it easy, they just do whatever nature wants them to do, and they did it for a long time already, right? But humans only think about how awful it is that they eat plants and try to stop them from doing what they do. But they are amazing, they carry their houses on their backs."

"So you like them?" Maka asked again. He made a good point, but he did not answer her question.

She heard him move around. Maybe he was nodding, she obviously couldn't tell. If he was, he forgot that she wasn't able to see it.

"I don't know, maybe?" he finally answered awkwardly, as if he wanted to avoid the question.

Usually it wasn't her asking the questions, so she took that as the reason. She wanted to ask a lot, though.  
But she just smiled.

"You should take it back outside. I think it's lonely without the other snails."

Maka felt how he plucked the small animal from her hand. She missed it immediately, even if she understood that it belonged outside.  
Still, the sudden disappearance of the snails that explored her hand felt strange.

"Do snails have a soul?" Soul asked while his voice moved away from her.

"Everything has a soul." Maka responded. In fact, she could say that she had two, but she kept the pun to herself.

* * *

Soul continued to put things into her hands. It was like he found a new favorite hobby.

* * *

Maka didn't like to be dependent. And she certainly didn't like do be a burden. But even with that mindset, she had come to accept that she just wasn't able to do certain tasks that were easy to accomplish for people who could see. Others she could so, but they took her longer than they usually would. And sometime she would just ignore these, as she didn't see the point in them. Why would she waste time on irrelevant things? It would be a different case if it was an academical problem, or maybe battles or people who were in need – she would gladly spend lots of time on those, and more time on getting better in her role as a meister.

But not on ordinary, unimportant thing that had no influence on life whatsoever.

One of these things were her clothes. While they were sorted by color (because if she could believe what everyone said, certain colors would look hideous together – not that she cared, but she wanted to spare the people who would look at her), she didn't care about blouses and buttons at all. She never owned a blouse with buttons before, even if she was able to button up a blouse herself. It was a waste of precious time.

When she went to choose some parts for her new school-related attire (accompanied by Tsubaki, who generously offered to help), the only thing she requested was a blouse with puffed sleeves and elastic in them. Tsubaki advised her to take a white one, as it would go with everything, or so she said. She got her blouse, it had short sleeves, a rounded collar and a permanently attached, thin ribbon. It couldn't be helped, and as with the buttons, she knew her experiences with neckties were futile ones that took lots of time. She also didn't fancy the thought of accidentally hanging herself if she was in a hurry to tie it.

She refused all the other parts of the offered uniforms. She already owned the other parts she wanted to wear, including a black coat to keep her clothes relatively clean and leather gloves to avoid the blisters that would come if she gripped Soul unprotected.

When they went home, Tsubaki talked about how black and white would go with almost every color (and she did this in her usual gentle and unprovocative way), so if she found clothes she liked, it was always best to ask if they were black or white.

Maka nodded, she knew about this, but she could hardly blame Tsubaki giving well-meant advice. She'd probably say the same if Maka wasn't blind.

But in the end, Maka only wanted to understand the concept of black and white.

* * *

When it came to chores around the house, she and Soul had to arrange _something – _and that was especially true for cooking.

While she could cook quite well, she knew if she had to do everything alone, it would take forever and they could expect Tsubaki's grandchildren to visit them before it was done. And with their schedule being tighter on some days, they had to think of something. So, just like they had figured out with every other kind of housework, they had to do it together and share the work.

If it had been different, Maka would have been perfectly happy to switch every day, but that just wasn't possible, and at least she came to the conclusion that Soul would learn his way around the kitchen faster that way, without the burnt first attempts she would expect from him.

At first, the potatoes he peeled for her felt like perfect cubes (the term her mother taught her for this kind of thing was the ominous 'bachelor's potato', and even if he wasn't quite old enough to be called that, she understood the meaning of it now), but she was overjoyed to notice that he was getting better quickly.

But Maka had a feeling, and one that made her quite mad, that he didn't trust her with a kitchen knife. She wouldn't know how to interpret it differently.

She could feel his observant stare when she was cutting meat, vegetables or whatever, and it irritated her.

Was he serious about that?

He trusted her to swing him around when he transformed into a gigantic scythe, but not when handling a kitchen knife? Or maybe he didn't trust her general way of handling things and just had no choice in that matter.  
It was not like he could just run away in the middle of a battle without getting minced in the process. And letting her to become minced meat, too.

Hopefully his sudden limpness was not a bad omen.  
She pushed her thought back into her head, as she always did.  
There they could ferment into natto.  
Or do whatever.

The next time she was cutting a piece of pork, Maka decided that the stare in her neck became a little too uncomfortable for her to endure.

"If you're done peeling over there, then come here and look at what I'm doing." she stated dryly, his response was just an unwilling moan.

"Do I really need to? I thought I did what I had to do for now."

His sudden, unwilling laziness was not making anything easier.

"Just stop complaining and get over here, I want to show you something." Maka curtly replied, and soon she heard him sigh and slowly move up from his comfortable place on the sofa. He clearly wasn't up for an argument.

"Fine, whatever. What is it?" Judging from the sound of it, Maka predicted that he was leaning on the counter, it made a lot of these strange, slightly worrying creaking noises old things do. It made her wonder just how old this whole building was and how many people lived here before them.

"Look at the meat, I want to show you how I cut it. Just so you know I'm not going to stab you in your sleep." She placed a finger on the slab of meat in front of her. "I can use my eyes to see how big the pieces are, so I try to feel for some kind of structure in the meat. It's not a paste, many kinds of meat have fat marbling you can feel. Beef would be better to explain it, but, well. I feel for the structure of the meat, measure the thickness of the cuts with my fingers and try not to cut against the way the meat grew. That would make it chewy."

"Okay. And what was that about stabbing me in my sleep?" he yawned, feigning indifference.

Maka gritted her teeth. So he just stared at her to set her off. She should have known.

"Only if you really want to, I know at least ten spots on your body where a stab would end up being lethal."

"What."

She rammed her knife into the cutting board.

"Now, do something productive, or next time you start wobbling like a wet noodle, I will tie you into a pretzel!"

"What! I didn't wobble, and what the hell!" he quickly shuffled away, leaving Maka to angrily chop up the poor piece of pork.


	6. Toppled By A Top Hat, Part 1

How fitting was this? It was Friday, the 13th, they were after their thirteenth soul, and he had the nagging feeling that Maka was ready to vomit all over his shoes. She did not look healthy, at all, and even he with his limited medical knowledge could tell that the powers of the mighty (and truly nasty) stomach flu were at work. But she, as always, had stubbornly refused to pay a visit to the infirmary, stating that getting this done was more important than some pinching feeling in her stomach and the pale face he's been talking about for hours.

Oh, and she also insisted that she felt so much better already!

Great.

She could talk all she wanted, in the end, she wasn't the one who had to watch her release the goods of her stomach to open air if she might not be as well as she said she was.

This whole thing would have been easy if she weren't sick.

Their target was located near a camping site, and was apparently 'highly eccentric' and 'bothering the campers'. Hell if Soul knew how this made you into one of these kishin-things. He had seen lots of ugly modern art paintings already that were 'highly eccentric' and 'bothered him'.  
And while the target himself was described as 'fairly docile' (unlike the guy from the week before, who turned out to be some kind of hybrid between a slug and a human and was mildly psychotic), he had tendencies to 'have strange things happen around him' with caused people to fall off cliffs.

That sounded a little more like a potential threat.

So in short, Soul concluded, it was a confused, brainless psycho who gained some kind of power after turning the way he was now and had no means to control it. Just what he needed after last weeks bath in slug intestine.

To top it off, the camping site was located somewhere in nowhere and a million states over. So he was stuck on a train (again, the school sure was stingy when it came to plane tickets) for an eternity, accompanied by his meister, whose stomach made some sounds that could be adequately described as 'unusual'.  
It was on a weekend, too. It just had to be on a weekend. He'd rather be at home, maybe even in his bed. Or better, the sofa, there he could watch how Maka prepared food in the fascinating way she did. He liked watching he cook – it was very interesting. At his former home, he never saw how the food was prepared, nor did anyone even bother to ask if he liked the stuff on his plate. But Maka always asked if he did, and she actively wanted his help and worked with a certain ease he liked. It really didn't take him long to feel more at home with her than he did in the house of his parents. Which really didn't bother him too much, if he was honest. But he wouldn't tell her that.

It was enough that he now had an idea about what home felt like, even if he was sure that it wasn't a common in occurrence in other home to be hit with a book.

He just wanted to be back home now. Her face carried a look of misery (he could only guess that the rocking train wasn't helping) and he had to admit to himself that he was worried. It wasn't the first time he was, he noticed, he was worried from the start when he noticed that she was not quite as good with her eyes. Usually her happy confidence was overpowering, and he swayed along, because it felt right and good in a way.

But still, he hoped that she would not be in need of a stretcher to get home.

She couldn't really fool him, too. Her face was an open book for everyone, and she didn't even know.  
Maybe distracting her would help, taking her thoughts off of her stomach.

He just had no idea how to start.

Soul just wasn't a bonafide conversationalist.

"How do you feel?" he inquired and mentally smacked himself. Not a good start.

Maka just sighed in a manner that told him just enough to guess her current state of annoyance, and if he was right, then he was responsible for a big part of it, he estimated about 98.9%. Not that he deemed himself a genius regarding math and percentages, but this number did sound fairly reasonable.

"I'm alright, I told you already. You know, a few minutes ago. It's really nothing."

Oh yes, he agreed. Just like the broken ribs two months ago, the ones she only told him about when she got out of the infirmary two days later. They did heal well, but her way of downplaying her state of health was still the same.

He felt a little alarmed about the way he got attached to her so quickly.

"Right, I see it now. Why would I ask, green is a very healthy complexion for a healthy person." He rolled his eyes and part of him was glad that she couldn't see it. And maybe he felt silly to use colors to describe the way she looked.

"Are you making fun of me?" She hissed, crossing her arms in the defensive way that was a good warning sign. If he went on with it, he'd have the flat side of a book in his face soon.

Even if he still thought that the spine would be a better weapon, the thought of suggesting was not a very pleasant one. Even if her aim with the flat side was better, he didn't want to tell her that even if she didn't get him as much with the spine, the damage would go up with each hit she did land.  
Soul had better self preservation skills than that.

"Never. I'm just concerned about my shoes, vomit might stain the yellow color a bit too much."  
Soul groaned and gripped his hair. After the last six hours (four of them were spent in a state of half-sleep when he was too afraid that Maka might seriously throw up all over him) it looked and felt like a skunk that's been run over a million times and still wasn't dead. Hopefully he didn't smell like that. There were ways to make an impression on other people, and emitting a bad smell wasn't his choice. Actually he was very curious about the way he smelled for other people, but waltzing in and asking 'Hey, Maka, Black*Star, Tsubaki, what do I smell like?' was probably one of the creepiest things he could think of, aside from stalking someone, dressed only in a grass skirt.

And he had seen some student do such a thing already.

But he knew that Maka loved the smell of lavender. On herself, he presumed.  
In fact, he knew it first hand.  
One time he accidentally grabbed her bottle of shampoo and spent the rest of the day hovering amidst a gentle cloud of lavender, prompting Black*Star to tell him that he 'smelled like a fucking bouquet, seriously'.  
Of course, Maka thought it was funny, but since then he'd made a point of it to put their shampoos on different sides of the tub. He never wants to be a bouquet again.  
There were people that were meant to be bouquets.  
He wasn't.

Luckily, they had a whole compartment for themselves.

He didn't care to have too many people around him on this kind of ride, the last time they were on a train and didn't have a compartment, he just wanted to rip his eardrums out because of the stuff the other people were talking about.

He looked at Maka again, who had not said anything after he voiced his worry about his shoes. Maybe that had not been the best thing to mention.

Her eyes were shut tightly. Some time ago he noticed that sometimes, when she was really calm or when she tried to relax, her breathing slowed down immensely and he could hardly tell if she was awake or asleep.  
It was probably a perk of her situation.  
Everyone would just assume the latter and not disturb.

"You weren't born in America, right?" She wasn't asleep. He should have figured.

"Is it important?" He just shrugged.

"No," she spoke, "but you are a bad conversationalist, and the conversation died far too quickly."

Yes, maybe he was, but did she have to pick a topic he absolutely didn't want to talk about? Maybe she just did some kind of ESP and picked exactly the one thing that made him feel uncomfortable.

"What about you, you're Japanese, right?" He tried to dodge the question, maybe he could bring her to talk about herself and forget about her initial question.

"No, only my mother is Japanese. But I learned to speak both languages at the same time, so I am fluent in both." Maka repositioned herself on the seats. Her head was now leaning against the window.

Maybe turning the topic around didn't work as well as planned. Now she didn't only look sick, she also looked sad.

Soul remembered that he had never seen her mother since they met, the only information about her was the she 'wasn't fond' of her father anymore. Maybe she was dead, or left her family for some reason. Either way, she wasn't around and the only parent she had was her father, who still suspected Soul to conspire against him (the last time they met, he shouted 'if you ever kill my daughter, I will elope with you', which cemented Soul's belief that the man was mental) and took every opportunity to rain snot all over his child.  
He wondered what her mother might look like, if she was a very small person and if she also had a very expressive face. And tiny feet.

"Do you remember when I asked you about your eyes? You know why you keep them shut and all that." He tried to pick a subject that wasn't likely to end in awkward silence, and going back on something he said quite some time ago and was possibly forgotten did look like a safe route to take.

Maka groaned, it wasn't quite clear if it was because of her stomach making a ruckus or if the question annoyed her.

"Yea, I remember. Why?"

"I just thought about it."

She giggled in response.

"What?" Soul questioned, "I didn't really mean it as a joke, you know."

Maka sucked some air in and made a sound as if it quelled her need to giggle more. "Oh, no, I just...you must have thought deeply about it, if it took you so long to get back to it."

"...right, whatever. I just want to mention that you can keep your eyes open around me, if you like, I don't think it's creepy." He actually thought that it was more creepy to see her with her eyes shut all the time, it made him feel like he was talking to a sleepwalker. He was probably the only person to think that way, he reckoned.

"Hmmm," Maka hummed, "okay, if you don't mind then."

He wasn't able to tell if she sounded relieved or worried, or maybe something in between, but for him it felt important to tell her that it really didn't matter to him if her eyes were not acting like eyes usually do. In fact, he believed that everyone who had complained about her eyes in the past must have been really easy to disturb, it wasn't bad at all. It was like she was looking at something far away, or as if she was caught in a constant state of dreaming.

* * *

One of the first things bothering him was their accommodation (apart from the fact that accommodation meant that they would have to spend more time stuck in the middle of nowhere), which was a hotel.

"Why, tell me, is there a hotel around here? Isn't this supposed to be a camping site? Doesn't that mean sleeping in tents or whatever people do while camping in the middle of nowhere?" Soul didn't get it. Fine, it was a small hotel, not a giant block of concrete owned by some famous chain, but still, there weren't supposed to be hotels near a camping site.

"Don't ask me, maybe because there are too many spoiled people who think that this kind of vacation is the same thing as camping? You can sleep in the woods if you like, I'm not here for camping." And with that, she just pushed the glass doors open.

Soul just walked behind her, making sure that she didn't bump into anything unexpected. And pushed her the right way when she almost missed the front desk.  
She was really amazing in surroundings she knew, or with many people around, but every now and then, when they were somewhere new, she reminded him a little of a drunk mole with a blindfold.  
And sometimes, it really wasn't the least bit funny.

The ladies at the desk gave them strange looks when he shoved her in the right direction and she chirped a greeting towards them. And their faces started to look more amusing by the second when Maka explained that they were there to get rid of the problem in the woods.

"Oh, um, please don't take it personally, but we expected someone...older. And maybe a little taller." The blonde one said, while the other one fetched their key. The school took care of reservations, and apparently they never tell anyone who to expect.

He also expected the woman to exclaim that she expected someone who could see. There was no way in hell she hadn't noticed their extraordinary way to navigate towards the desk.

"It will work just fine, don't worry about it." Maka exclaimed with a false calamity, because she still looked like hell. Maybe it wasn't so bad that she could not see herself in that little mirror of hers.

When the other lady returned, she didn't just carry the key, but also an apologetic expression on her face. The kind he knew people make when they are about to say something offensive, it was just like starting a sentence with 'No offense', the ultimate indicator to idiocy.

"Here you go, I'm sorry, but our rooms are not outfitted for disabled-" she was cut off by her colleague, who shushed her harshly, but Maka shrugged.

"I don't see any disabled people around here. Let's go, Soul."

Soul grabbed the key from the receptionist's hand in a rather harsh fashion before Maka grabbed his hand and led him away, luckily towards the elevator. There were many things he would call her, but disabled probably wasn't one of them – for someone without functioning eyes, she got along pretty well outside of battles, even if new surroundings were confusing her at times.  
And he wouldn't dare to go into her weird sense for people. Going through the hallways with her was like running a perfectly timed slalom, one with people instead of flags. He usually bumped into more people than she did, and she never bumped into anyone.

The elevator was small and had some terrible music blaring from an equally horrible mono speaker. For a brief moment, he considered cutting the thing down, if only to stop listening to what he thought was Satan singing in the shower after a long day at work.  
But before he could react, the elevator reached their floor (directly under the roof) and they could finally reach their room (directly under the roof slope – something he thought must have been an act of malevolence the receptionist downstairs committed consciously). At least she had given them a room with twin beds, he wasn't too interested in sharing a bed with her, neither did he want to catch whatever she had.

He just watched when Maka threw her bag down next to her bed (without any idea how she figured out that there was a bed there) and sat down in a fashion that told him that she waited for him to get ready, so they could head out straight away.

Soul was still not sure if the whole thing was such a smart idea, considering her current state. While he couldn't certainly say if she felt the way she looked, the visual indicator would usually be enough for him.  
He decided to take his time. A few minutes wouldn't hurt, and he wanted to see how long he could make her wait, after all, he would probably be prompted to read the description of the target to her again, and he wanted to put that off as long as possible. He felt like an idiot whenever he had to do that, it was like reading to a small child in the body of someone older.

So Maka was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking more irritated by the minute, but not saying anything. He could only guess what kind of snappy comments she was brewing up in her brain, and as eager as he was to make her snap, it actually made him feel a little bad. The sooner they finished this whole mission, the better.

"Fine, I get it." Soul finally gave in, he sat down on the edge of his own bed and the bedding with the blue Vichy check made a slightly too crisp sound to not make him worry about the comfort these beds would offer. In his mind, it was the sound a bed made out of potato chips would make, the kind of bed he didn't want to sleep in.

"I think you got it about ten minutes ago, but I didn't want to disturb your important business of whatever you were doing. This room must be really exciting if it captures all of your attention." She said snappishly. "Just give me the information again, you and your eyes that can detect the language of mankind."

"Are you saying that you are an alien? Does that mean the goosebumps in your books are actually an alien language?" He inquired teasingly while pulling the sheet with all the info from his bag. He seriously didn't want to do that again, even if it was unfair towards her, but nothing in life is supposed to be fair, right?

"It's called _braille_, Soul, it's not goosebumps," She rubbed her forehead with her hand, "just give me the info and we'll set out, and I'll let you plunder the dinner buffet or whatever they have here. I'll give you my dessert, but just give me the information."

Was she seriously bribing him into doing everything properly? With a _dessert_, nonetheless? That wasn't good.  
He quickly decided to go along with it, if she started to offer him her dessert (which she probably wouldn't eat anyway, he thought), she was in neither a good mood nor was she well. Even if she tried not to act upon it.

"Okay, whatever you say. We're looking for some guy who goes by," he paused for a second and weighted the odds of this description being a joke, "...Procrastinator. What the hell? Is that seriously his name?"

Maka groaned. "Maybe he didn't hand in his homework on time. Go on."

"..fine, his name is Tijn Niels Van Wegberg. That's not better, seriously. He wanders around aimlessly, can best be described as 'eccentric' and sometimes throws things off of cliffs. He also doesn't know what he is doing and his shit is going haywire. Enough yet?"

"And what does he look like?" Maka's voice sounded as if she was pleading him to not stretch his dramatic reading any further.

He just thought that this was the most stupid Dutch (or what he thought was Dutch) name he had ever heard. Maybe he didn't a hear a lot of them every day, but he drew the line when it came to names like 'Tijn' – how should he even pronounce that?

"Fine, he.." Soul stopped again, amazed and astounded by what he was reading. Or maybe he was disgusted, he couldn't tell himself. "...his most characteristic item is a top hat that's completely covered in sparkly, pink sequins. He also carries a cane with a rubber octopus on top of it."

At this point, Soul had to give up internally. He had seen students wearing grass skirts, students transforming their arm into a gigantic, pink carnation; he had even seen Death himself!  
All their enemies were at least a little bit threatening or disgusting, and now they were up against a demented magician who throws children off a cliff while waving his octopus scepter. That wasn't frightening, that was silly. And he didn't care to inform anyone about their opponent when they got home, he didn't want to be known as the guy who fought against Master Sparklebutt and his squeaky octopus.  
It just wasn't cool.  
And why in the world did Maka ask what he looks like? That kind of stuff was completely irrelevant to her, if he was informed correctly (and no miracle had happened while he was eyeing the written description in his hands).

"Good, now I know what to remind you of when we're searching. Look for the sparkly top hat, Soul." Maka giggled in the weird, fake fashion sick people use to assure everyone that they are '_fine, really!_'.

Also, he should have known that the question about the looks of this person was only posed to press the fact that he is the one who has to look. And from the sound of it, she also wanted to annoy him, possibly as payback for whatever he did before.

Maybe it won't be so bad to kill this guy.

At least then he'll not pose a threat to people with good fashion taste anymore.


	7. Toppled By A Top Hat, Part 2

The sun started to set and it was getting awfully chilly. In moments like these, Soul wished she wouldn't wear those gloves made from smooth, white kidskin. Maybe this wasn't the only reason, but one of them. It would for a change be nice to feel her hands gripping the pole, not just the gloves.  
They also made weird, squeaky sounds because of the friction.  
She started wearing them from their first mission on, and he felt bad because she needed to. She wanted to avoid blistering and they were for a better grip, and he could understand that, but deep inside, he was a little ashamed that just by being there, he would hurt her hands.

And after knowing what her hands felt like from the first day they met, the gloves felt strangely foreign.

"You see anything yet?" Maka panted right next to him. Usually her brisk pace would not send her into such a state, but he was still convinced that she was not alright, and he sure hoped that the confrontation with the sparkly weirdo would end up being an easy one.

"Not yet, and if this goes on, I will need night vision scope to see anything. It will be hard to see anything if we don't find him, and I don't want to camp in the woods tonight." He largely preferred the potato chip bed over curling up next to a root and shaking violently. At least the bed was not full of worms and bugs. Or at least he hoped so.

"Yes, it would be awful, not being able to see anything. Can't imagine what that would be like." She huffed and paused for a second to catch her breath.

Soul groaned (causing him so sound like a broken xylophone for the outside world) and tried to adjust himself in his little mind space. Staying transformed still caused kinks in his back he could live without.

"Don't take it out on me."

"Take out what on you, Soul? Do tell me." The irate tone in her voice came out of nowhere, and he had to admit that he had no idea how cranky Maka was when she was sick. After all this was the first time she was, and he didn't count physical injuries. She took those without so much as a twitch and a moan.

"Your bad mood? Don't you think it's the wrong time to question my motives? It's freezing out here and I don't care if we find this guy today or tomorrow." It was a lie, he just wanted their target to drop dead right now and leave this place. And he seriously didn't care about being cold.

Maka shook him angrily, but just continued walking afterwards. In fact, she didn't talk to him at all, she completely ignored him and everything he commented on on their way. He liked that even less than her snappish way of dealing with the situation. Sure, she brought it upon herself with her irrational need to accomplish missions in regular intervals, but he wouldn't give in now, even if she ignored him.  
He wanted to make perfectly clear that she couldn't just ignore him.

"Maka." he glanced at her face. "Maka. Maka. Maka!"

Still nothing. How were they going to find Van Wegberg like this? Or 'The Procrastinator', if he wanted to go with the alias. It sounded like the name of a really pathetic supervillain. A seriously pathetic one.

Soul shuddered internally at the thought of the sequined top hat. Hopefully the rest of his outfit wasn't as garish.

"Maka. Listen to me, Maka." He tried again, to no avail. "Are you going to ignore me from now on? Maka?"

She was very quiet. So quiet that he could hear the nocturnal critters come out of their hiding places. It wasn't even completely dark yet, the scenery was painted with an orange and yellow tint, and it would be really beautiful if it weren't for the fact that his meister was playing ostrich and that a crazy sparkleclown was lurking somewhere.

"Shush already, I think someone's around!" Maka snipped her finger against his blade to silence him, and for him it was just like church bell ringing right next to his ear. At least he would now never be forced to hear the elevator music again!

Soul just assumed he was deaf now. They would make an awesome team, the blind girl and the deaf scythe. Maybe a circus would buy them.  
He actually saw their target then, strolling absentmindedly through the thicket. And what a sight he was, his top hat glistened in the sunset, the pink and mint stripes of his suit were quite the thing, too. And to top it all off, he wore gold plated tap dance shoes. The squeaky octopus sat on top of his cane.  
It made Soul wish he could rip his own eyes out.

"Right, he's there, now, kill him." He didn't want to look at him any longer, not at the swishing jabot or the swirly mustache. Never in his life did he ever think much about what other people look like, but this guy, he decided, should and would be one of his first exceptions. It was just more than he could take, and he thought that as a person who was into bright colors most of the time.

"I know he's around." Maka just whispered towards his eye after turning him around a little.

"You knew all along?" He asked, maybe she didn't ignore him on purpose after all and she was just following one of her weird hunches.

"Of course I knew, didn't you notice that all the birds flew off suddenly?" Maka breathed out in an attempt to be quiet. "So, should we make our presence known or do we go for a surprise attack, what do you think?"

What he thought? He though that they shouldn't be here at all, they should be at home, she should be in bed and he should probably try and force her to drink one of those weird teas against stomach pain they give out in the infirmary like candy. That's what he was supposed to do, right?

"I think the vegetation is too thick for a surprise attack, but-" A sudden noise interrupted Soul mid-sentence, and when he looked straight ahead, his vision was filled with pink sequins and an unnecessary amount of glitter.

"Do we have a visitor! That's so nice, I never have girls around anymore! I wonder where they all went? But will you stay for dinner, because I see, Miss, you brought your own cutlery!" He smiled and exposed his (strangely sparkly) teeth. "Would you care for cake, too?"

"Cutlery?" Soul huffed offendedly, "Let us kill him now, I am not a piece of cutlery!"

Maka backed away from the strange sight of a man. "We were going to do that anyway! But-"

He cut Maka off too.

"-but I see, I see! You are not a guest, you are the decoration. My bad, pardon me."

And without delay, he lunged at her, swinging his octopus cane around like a (more or less) menacing sword and not succeeding in hitting Maka nor Soul. The latter was not sure if he should be confused or disgusted at this person, and when he decided to look at Maka's face, he went with disgusted. Her expression made clear that this guy had bad breath, something she probably didn't care to smell right now. But there was something different.

"What's wrong? You can just hit him, you know." He tried to push her a little, but something about the way she was moving seemed off, and it wasn't something that was caused by her nausea. Her movement was..not shaky, but she swayed a little, like her limbs were suddenly really heavy.

"Maka?"

No reaction. But suddenly, something rustled in the thicket.

"Oooh?" Van Wegberg suddenly stopped attacking, turned around and ran off at almost inhuman speed.

At least now Soul understood why he was called 'Procrastinator'.  
The moment he was gone, the strange behavior Maka displayed vanished, too. He would have thought it was scary, but after all, it was just Maka.

"You alright?" He asked again, confused about the way she behaved earlier.

"I don't know, something was...strange," She let out a heavy sigh, "he has really bad breath though. Let's go after him before a catches some poor rabbit or whatever that sound was."

If she didn't know herself what was going on with this guy, then it was time to consider that he might not be the easy and harmless target he appeared to be.

* * *

They were chasing him all across the woods, and every now and then, when he thought Maka wasn't paying attention, Soul started drifting off to sleep. He knew it was a bad idea, sleeping would only reward him with a sore neck once he changed back, and it was something he definitely wasn't looking forward to. But he also could not understand how Maka was still so driven, considering it was the middle of the night and she looked like hell.  
Van Wegberg was either every quick, or very elusive – they hadn't seen him in a while. The last time Soul spotted him, he was drawing on a tree with chalk and then quickly disappeared.  
This guy was annoying, random, and potentially very dangerous, and it irked him that they were still going after him.

He also felt watched, and it didn't sit well with him. It was like their enemy was purposefully leading them on, and it gave him unpleasant flashbacks to their first assignment.

"I have no idea where we are going Soul, are you still asleep?" He heard Maka's breathless question right next to him, and it made him flinch. He felt like a child who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"I didn't sleep, I meditated."

"Do forgive me, I forgot that meditation involves loud and obnoxious snoring." She just remarked and stopped to catch her breath.

"I do not snore, but try sleeping in this position for a moment and see how well you fare." He wasn't proud of himself, but he could not change what happened now, right?

"So you were sleeping!" She triumphantly piped up as if it raised her spirits. "But if you say that I should try, do you mean that you'll carry me over your shoulder for the next two hours? Because that's what I've been doing all along, if you care to remember."

"...shouldn't we be searching for this glittery clown, or something?" Every part of his being told him to give up if he didn't want to get into a dispute in the middle of nowhere. And regarding that, he had no idea about how they were going to get back.

"I tried, but I lack certain abilities to actually make a difference, you know. Like eyesight." She sighed heavily. "Let's just move on."

Yes, they certainly should get moving again. But suddenly there was this strange behavior from before again, Maka's legs started shaking slightly and she looked like she had a hard time concentrating. At the same time, she started sweating and Soul started to feel her pulse even through her gloves; it was fast and intense and not very comforting – and it was picking up.  
Did she have a fever? Was she just not saying anything about it because she wanted to get everything done and not be forced to quit for the night? Something was wrong.

"Are you _really_ sure you are alright? We will just go back if you're sick, you know, right?"

She didn't answer. Whatever it was, it wasn't doing her condition any favors. Her face was even paler than usual (the dim moonlight wasn't helping), and it was almost like her could feel her head pound just by looking at her.  
He had to admit, this kind of empathy between them scared him a little, and he contemplated if he should talk to Nygus and ask some questions about that stuff. This woman was one of the few people he deemed sensible enough not to think of him as pathetic, and after all, he had a feeling if he would ask Maka about that, she's be scared. She appeared to be that kind of person.

"I...I don't...can't you...?" Maka stammered, ans she almost sounded as if she was in agony. Her hands were clutching his pole tightly, as if she felt weak and unstable. It looked like she wanted to walk down a flight of stairs after having her legs fall asleep, only much more painful.

"What can I not? What's wrong?" He looked at her, without any idea what was happening and what he should do. Should he change back? But he'd been taught that he should never change back, unless the fight was over or his meister asked him to.

If he felt slightly helpless when the Creeper from their first mission slammed them around, he now felt like a child lost in the woods, literally.  
Was she having a heart attack? He couldn't just sit here and let her go into cardiac arrest, could he?  
Soul was scared. The trees loomed over them, casting long, menacing shadows and the air stood completely still. Everything was silent and the moon illuminated only the slightest bit of their surroundings. There was nothing but Maka's heavy breathing.  
When he finally made up his mind about changing back, he felt a strange, rubbery sensation where his blade and his pole connected, and within a second, he was ripped out of Maka's hands and catapulted a good distance away into the bushes.

He could faintly hear her breathless "What..? No..!" and fast, hysteric footsteps before he landed somewhere far away in the greenery. It took him a second to realize that Van Wegberg had levered him out of her grip with his cane while Maka couldn't react and he was busy thinking.  
He mentally prepared himself to find her with her head bashed in while he got back on his feet and started hacking the shrubbery to pieces. Maybe he could have done something to avoid this situation, maybe he shouldn't overthink so much if she needed help. He still had no idea what was wrong, and where did they run off to? There weren't that many options. She couldn't really see where she was going.

If only he had been more careful.

* * *

After what felt like an eternity searching (and picking up one of Maka's boots without any idea on how she lost it), he reached the cliff end of the patch of forest, and in the dim light, he realized that the woods weren't as big or as extensive as he thought, and that they had been running in circles for most of the time.  
It made him feel guilty for sleeping through it.  
His attention was drawn away from the sight of the forest when he heard some gagging sounds from the edge of the cliff. He quickly walked towards the source of the gagging and, in a rare streak of luck, found Maka with only one boot, vomiting her innards out next to a lone tree near the cliff.  
Not a pretty sight per se, but better than a dead Maka in a pool of blood and vomit.

"How did you lose your boots while running from that psycho?" He tried to state calmly while approaching her, even if he felt more than glad that she wasn't dead, or even close to being dead. He could deal with sick, he thought again, but not with dead.

"I..I did not lose it," Maka wiped her mouth on a handkerchief she magically conjured from one of the inner pockets of her coat, "I left it so you knew where to go – I just ran away and I did not know where I was going. I tried to defend myself against him, but, it's.."

She was forced to pause while a cough shook her.

"..it's the squeaky thing on his cane, Soul! I'm not emptying out myself here because it just happens to be so, I swear. The thing makes noises, and that's why I felt so weird back then. And he just left me here, it shrieked at me, and it made me sick..and then he left..."

He shook his head in confusion. If the rubbery octopus on the cane made shrieking noises, why couldn't he hear them? He could hear most other things that happened around him while he was transformed, so he would have surely heard that kind of thing, right?

"Are you sure? I didn't hear anything, and I was there too." He handed her boot back, and watched her while she put it back on. The sock on that foot was torn on the sole from the run through the forest.

"No, Soul, believe me," she got back up on her feet, shaking slightly, but otherwise unharmed, "he doesn't even know himself I think, he gets distracted very easily and I don't think he knows what's happening. But I know he certainly isn't docile."

Well, she was right about this guy not being docile. After all, he thought they were decorations for his imaginary party, and then he tried to whack them. And just the thought about the kind of decoration he meant was enough to make Soul's head ache. Even more than the usual amount of headache he had when they were fighting. It was strange.

"I don't know anymore. Let's just not get separated again, right?" He released a deep breath, partly because he was relieved, and because he was just a little bit tired. "We should rest for a few minutes, I don't really care for any more bushwhacking."

But Maka shook her head.

"Soul, I don't think we should just stand around here, we don't know if he comes back. We should be ready."

Was she serious? Just after she'd been chased through the flora of this place, she wants to set off right back into it?

"Right, no. We've been trying all night, and believe it or not, we're not machines. At least I am not, no idea about you." He buried his hands in his pockets and sat down near the edge of the cliff. There was no way she could make him go back in there without even taking a short break beforehand, because for all that was holy, they both needed it.

Maka sighed, and for a second it was like she was going to sit down next to him.

But then there was a hissing sound and a dull thump.

And then he saw how Maka fell off the edge of the cliff right next to him.


	8. Toppled By A Top Hat, Part 3

Soul eventually found a way off that godforsaken cliff with more than shaky legs, and his efforts to pick a groaning Maka out of the tree that cushioned her fall proved more than fruitless.

* * *

The bastard in his tasteless top hat whacked her straight down the cliff with his stupid cane, right next to where he sat. Only thinking about it made Soul angry, especially since he promptly received the confirmation that Maka had been right: the octopus on the cane started screeching the second after she was out of the picture.

After he managed to peel his gaze from the edge she fell from, he could hear it. Loud and clear. And he could feel it, too.

His head started pounding, his throat and tongue dried up and stuck together and every part of his intestine started knotting up, as if an icy hand started tugging on it. The sound went from his ears through his whole body, and he started to feel sick and paralyzed, he couldn't move at all. It was like something was immobilizing him from the inside, like pain that caused him to lose control over his body.

Was it the same thing Maka was feeling before? Or was it even worse because she most definitely was sick already?

While he was still trying to pull himself together, Van Wegberg suddenly lost interest in him. Everything just stopped when he just walked away, leaving Soul where he was.

Maybe the short attention span of this guy had just saved him, however, he needed to get down to the foot of the cliff to look for his meister. Normal people would have assumed that she would be dead on the ground, possible with a broken neck or a cracked skull, but he knew she wasn't. His instincts told him she was fine, but not in a good situation. So he worked himself back to his feet and hurried to find a way to help her out.

He found her on the edge of a cliff, lodged into the branches of a fluffy tree that cushioned her fall, moaning in either agony, anger or just resignment.

* * *

And the tree also wouldn't let go of her, no matter from which angle he tried to get to her. He wondered silently if the stupid thing really was her savior, or just wanted to kidnap her and keep her for eternity – if trees ever thought that way.

"Can you hear me up there?" He shouted, filled with the vague hope that he would get a rather sensible reply. Maybe he didn't need to shout – she wasn't that far up, but he didn't really care.

"Ugh." Maka replied rather promptly, considering her situation, "Just..hurry. Am I in a tree?"

How in the world would he get her down from there? He was not athletic enough to climb a tree, hell, he was happy he could get up the school's stairs without dying along the way.  
After another round around the wretched piece of nature and came to the conclusion that he would just cut it down. Maka would not like to hear it later, but he didn't really care, and unless they wanted to spend the rest of the night camping in and under a tree, it was the only solution.

"Can you hold on to something up there?"

"Hold on to what?" Maka sounded out of it, but then again, she probably thought she would die when she was falling. He couldn't really blame her.

"Some branches or something, and hold on tight, I cannot guarantee that this will be nice." Soul tried to determine from which direction he should cut to make it more likely that the trunk will not smash her to pieces. He was no lumberjack – his field of expertise was a little more refined, and the other one involved eating lots of pudding.  
It didn't help that holding a partial transformation proved difficult for him again. He remembered when it was all he could do, and when he managed to transform completely, there was no need to hold a partial transformation anymore, so he just didn't practice. How should he know that he would one day have to cut down a tree to harvest a grumpy fruit.

At least he knew that he wouldn't have to axe the thing down, one clean slice should be enough.  
One diagonal slice must do the trick, he really had no idea what he should do. If the thing came down on his head, he would be remembered as an idiot, but one who died for a good thing at least.

"Soul, what are you trying to do? Are going to cut the tree?" Maka asked groggily, in way that made her sound like she just got up from a nap that ended far too soon.

"Just don't think about it and hold on." He muttered under his breath while looking up to see on which side she was.

And he made his cut. Maka wailed in a slightly resigned fashion, as if she didn't want to deal with the trouble of feeling uncomfortable while being in a falling tree. He didn't blame her one bite, he wasn't the one who got thrown into what mus felt like the depths of hell for her.  
She managed to survive the fall of the tree without further damage – Soul gave the trunk a good pat and apologized silently before helping Maka up, but it had been the only way, and you do what you have to do. At least he wasn't a fire-lamp-thing like that one girl, it would have ended badly.

"How do you feel?" Was his first question after he pulled her up into a rather unstable standing position. She looked as groggy as she sounded, but apart from the bruises, scratches and one lacking hair tie, as good as one could after the whole ordeal they went through.

"...Ow." Maka replied while pulling a twig out of her hair. It was almost a miracle that her bones were all good (as far as Soul could tell, and his perception for battle damage was something he would call a 'work in progress'), even if it would be highly preferable to him if she would be completely alright without any visible damage.

At least her response made sense, in a way.

"Right, I want to go to bed, too." Soul proceeded by wrapping her arm around his, so they were at least vaguely linked and she would not fall to the ground suddenly. He wasn't quite sure if he could pick her up if that happened, or if his arms were too noodle-like for that kind of task. And throwing his meister around like a slinky in an attempt to move her body would probably not amuse her in the slightest.

He had to pull her a little so she would start walking. Everything went smoothly from that point on, even if he had no real idea about the distance they had to walk back to the hotel. He remembered how the forest wasn't as extensive as it looked, and that walking roughly in the opposite direction would probably be enough – and at the same time, he hoped that they would not meet Van Wegberg again as they journeyed back. They would be dead meat, and it was not the goal he set for himself (if he was honest though, he didn't set any goal at all).

"How late is it?" Maka asked, after some time without anything.

Soul just sighed. He would really like to know if she was still loopy or if that was a genuine question. Because as far as he knew, he could not read the time from a gigantic, digital clock that was conveniently fixed to the moon.  
Looking at the moon was a stupid idea anyway, that thing was gross and weird, and he didn't like it, ever since he was very little. The useless piece of rock even had the gall to drool blood tonight. It was one of his least favorite sights, bloodshed was not something to look forward to.  
He preferred the sun, even if that one was strange, too. But it was usually cheerful in an awkward, yet ridiculous way, it made bad days at least seem a little better.

"No idea, I don't carry a watch on me. But let me take a guess," Soul made a dramatic pause, "three or four in the morning. Maybe."

"How would you know?" Was her next question.

"Maybe I just bend time to my will, who knows." And maybe he would actually prefer to get her back into a mostly safe place right now, without much conversation. She really picked the wrong moment to be peculiar – couldn't that wait until later?

"No you can't, you're no Black*Star." She sighed in a fashion that made her statement seem more important than it was.

"Yeah, and I'm quite thankful I am not, I prefer to be me." That was a lie, but it helped in quelling her need to question him right now.

He just wanted to go to bed, no matter how crispy it was. And maybe raid one of the vending machines in the hotel, and get her...something for her stomach. Hopefully the night shift in the hotel was nice enough to actually help there.

* * *

They made it back within a reasonable amount of time, or so Soul thought. He wasn't quite sure how long they had been walking (with him pulling her from time to time because her legs started to drag, and maybe she was also limping occasionally), but it didn't feel long at all. It didn't really matter all that much to him, he was just satisfied with the thought of a warm bed and some rest.  
The young women were no longer at the reception desk, and Soul was certain he would not shed a single tear if they would also not be around in the morning, or whenever they would wake up.  
Instead, a young man was now manning the desk, and he shot them a sympathetic look without commenting on their obvious, sub-optimal state. He just handed over the key with a smile and wished them a good night. How nice.

"Hey." Soul poked Maka's side while they stood in the elevator, as she was hanging from his arm in an angle he could not quite understand. Maybe she was just asleep, it was hard to tell when she had her eyes closed. And thinking that way invoked a déjà vu in him.

"I am fine, just...am I close to the floor? I'm tired." She didn't sound tired, she sounded rather frustrated, but he'd just go with what she said. No use making a fuss over it now, and there were more important things to think of.

"Right, yes, you are, you're breathing in dust flakes from the carpet." He repressed a laugh when she suddenly pulled herself up. It was the first time he had seen her so out of it after a battle, but he couldn't help but think how unbelievably humorous it was to see her droop away. "Just so you know, you'll go and take a shower when we get to the room, and I'll get us something...drinkable."

He did not dare to talk about food, the last thing he wanted now was Maka projectile vomiting in the elevator. On second thought, the elevator music was bad enough to make anyone vomit.

"...you're sure? Oh, whatever, you're probably hungry. We should call the school later." Maka yawned. "I want to kill him tomorrow."

Soul offered no protest. It was fine by him. After all, she was his friend now and it would be rather depressing to have her die to a guy with a really ugly hat.

"Fine, but before we do that, I'd like to rehydrate myself. And you." If he was honest, both of them possibly carried the look of a dried-out cucumber by now.

The moment the elevator door opened, they made haste to get to their room, where Maka was more than happy to actually take a shower while he was gone. Usually they would fight about that right, but there was a certain lack of energy present.  
Soul just waited until he was sure that she didn't knock anything over (or got knocked over, he never knew – just that he wouldn't be able to be much help in that case), and hurried away, back to the reception.

The guy there just scratched his chin.

"I figured you might need something, but we don't have any more tea until breakfast. Hmm." He appeared to be thinking in a rather exhausting fashion.

Soul did not expect a hotel to have it's own pharmacy, but at least something that didn't upset her stomach anymore and was also consumable by him would be good. He'd even go for tap water if nothing else was possible!

But the guy at the desk suddenly shot up. "Well, I know what! Might not be ideal, but better than nothing, right?"

He wandered into the staff room, and Soul heard something that sounded suspiciously like a fridge door opening and closing. The receptionist came back with six bottles of what Soul suspected to be sweet tea, all wrapped up in a thin plastic wrap and with a handle on top. Obviously newly bought and never opened. And he handed them over to him with a large smile, too.  
Weren't they the receptionist's own? What?

"Uh..isn't that a little much?" The whole gesture confused him. Just because he told him that Maka has a stomach ache and needs...something?

"Hey, don't worry. You rid us off that weirdo with the hat, and I give you that. It belongs to the girls who work here, and hey, just don't tell them you got it, and they will never know."

Well, Soul could definitely live with that.

* * *

When he came back to the room, Maka had rolled herself up in her covers already and looked like a big, blue-and-white cocoon. She didn't even bother to stick her head out, and it was probably because there was nothing to see anyway.

"Did you get the thing you wanted?" She rolled around a little, until she found the place where cocoon was able to open.

"I did, I hope you like sweet tea." Soul plopped the whole pack down next to her. "Because we have six large bottles of it now."

Maka wrapped herself into her blanket while he was ripping the foil apart. The cocoon transformed into a nest.

"How...just how did you get them, seriously. Did you conjure them out of thin air?" She immediately started drinking the over-sugared liquid, and it actually made her look better.

Or maybe it was just her skin rehydrating, either way, Soul thought that she looked better by the second.

"My fairy godmother gave them to me. She just appeared in the hallway and told me that I look like I need a huge amount of sweet tea. And that's why you can drink it now. And now the shower is calling me. I might have to answer that."

Soul just left her to her tea. He was quiet sure that she would already be asleep when he was done (which was an uncomfortable thought, usually he was the one who fell asleep as soon as his head touched a pillow), and so he also prepared to call Shinigami-sama – as he was told to do if the mission took longer than one day. He was the one who made the calls anyway, as he could write on a fogged mirror, but he never did the talking. First time for everything.  
He found the single hair tie on the sink. Maka surely had more than that on her, in her bag with her hairbrush and all the other things she kept in there, so he just threw it into the trash. It didn't look like it could be salvaged anyway, lots of blonde hairs were just knotted around it, and getting it out had surely been uncomfortable.  
Other than that, she had left everything in a clean fashion, even if it wasn't needed. Maybe it helped her finding her way around, and cluttering everything just meddled with her perception of the room.  
The only thing she left behind was slightly warm and damp air, and the smell of the generic shampoo that was included as a complimentary amenity. And kind as she was, she only used half of it, too.

* * *

The mirror started ringing the second Soul got dressed again. His hair was still heavy with excess moisture, and the whole bathroom was foggy. He may or may not have taken his sweet time when he took his shower, as no one was waiting for him to finish up and there was no food going cold. However, it annoyed him a little that the call came in so early. Shinigami-sama (he decided he would just go with the way Maka called him, even though he heard his name in about a thousand other languages, too), was a god, right? If so, he knew that calling people who just stepped out of the shower was a little rude.

"Is it Soul? Finally! We've been trying to reach you for hours!" The cheerful voice of the deity was a little irritating to hear, especially so early in the morning. "What's up? Where's Maka?"

"She's..in bed." Soul knew he could possibly go and wake her, but the risk the get hit in the face with a book was too high, and as much as he disliked saying it, if someone woke him up suddenly, he'd be pissed, too. "Yeah...right, we need a little more time to take our target down, there were..problems, or something like that."

"Problems, you say? I see." The shinigami's voice took the kind of tone that gave away the fact that he knew more than he let on, and so did his mask. Soul thought it was pretty impressive (and weird) how a mask could display such a wide array of emotions, including some of the more ominous kind. "So, you need another day! No problem, no problem. Just takes care of yourselves, right?"

"...can I ask a question." He repressed a yawn while looking at the God of Death, "Why are you calling so early? You could..have tried later."

Shinigami-sama tilted his head, but then he came closer to the mirror.

"Oh, you see...I was afraid I would get Maka on the mirror, and.." He looked to his left and his right, as if he was scouting out his own room, "I couldn't risk that while her father was around! I bet you understand me, don't you?"

He understood perfectly well. Had her father seen her in her current state, Soul would have been hesitant to go back to Death City for the next fifty years. Dismemberment was not something he wished for, especially not by her psychopath of a father.

* * *

Maka had rolled herself up into a cocoon again, this was the first thing he saw when he left the bathroom. The second thing was the realization that she really was sleeping, and the third was the fact hat she had emptied a whole two-liter-bottle in the twenty minutes he was spending in the bath. Thirsty was probably an understatement.  
A quick glance towards the (rather loud) clock that adorned the wall revealed that it was three in the morning, so his guess had been a little off. It didn't bother him – it wasn't like it mattered now, and Maka wasn't able to read the clock anyway.  
He just decided to switch off the lights and curl up into his crispy bed. The sheets made uncomfortable sounds, just like they did when they arrived.

And he woke up again about an hour later. He just guessed it was an hour, he had no idea what time it was and it was still dark outside.

The reason for his untimely awakening were the angry sobbing sounds Maka was making, and the second he realized that _she could actually be crying, _he wished himself back to sleep. What was he supposed to do now, and why in the world did it happen now? Didn't she have enough time to break down while they were awake? And what reason did she have to?  
This was bad. He had no idea how to handle crying people, and Maka had never cried before. He had been under the firm belief that she didn't even own tear ducts!  
He stared at the dark ceiling for a minute.

What to do.

What did his grandmother do when he couldn't sleep? She rarely visited his family, and he had a hard time recalling things that happened when he was younger, mainly because he didn't want to. But maybe his strategy would work.  
He peeled himself out of his covers and reached over to her, to pat her head.  
Maybe it would help a little.

"We'll get him tomorrow, right?" He said when she flinched a little.

"Huh?" Maka turned around and faced his general direction. Or so he thought, it was pretty dark, after all.

"You're frustrated, right? Because we didn't kill him on the first try?" Her reaction was enough to tell him that he was probably wrong, but he just continued with this train of thought. Changing was too much effort, and it wouldn't be helpful anyway.

"Uh..oh, sure. I just...thought about something else." Maka rubbed her face with her sleeve. She was obviously calmer now, so Soul sat down on his own bed again. This whole situation had been awkward enough, and more head patting would not make it better.

"And about what?" He didn't mean to sound inquisitive, and he was sure she would show him if his questions were not welcome. She usually did. With a book to his face.

"Uh, it's just-" She sighed, "Falling was terrifying, I will never throw you anywhere again."

That was the problem? He expected something more dramatic, or more spectacular. Maybe physical pain! But she just felt bad about something that happened quite a while ago.

"So...alright, you did that once, it's not like you use me as a boomerang or something. Don't be silly about that, just forget it." Soul was ready to get back into his bed now that she felt better (and would let him sleep peacefully), but Maka suddenly shot up and started feeling around next to her bed until she found her bag.

She proceeded to pull out something and threw it after him, and he identified it as a small, prepackaged kind of cheesecake the size of a big chocolate bar.

"I packed that and forgot it! You did not eat anything yet and I don't..really need it, so help yourself, okay? Good night!" And with that, she rolled up into her cocoon again.

Soul just looked at the cake bar in his hand. It wasn't the first time he had seen those, she always gave them to him when he got up too late and had no time for breakfast. Not the best stuff in the world, but usually he appreciated that he still got anything, despite the fact that it was usually him who was responsible for his lack of breakfast.

* * *

He was surprised that he was the first one to wake up, but he concluded that there was a first time for everything. It gave him time to get ready and steal bananas from the breakfast buffet in the hotel's restaurant (the receptionist on duty shot him a confused look, but didn't comment) and get back. It took maybe ten minutes, or less, but when he came back, Maka was already up, dressed and was just lacking pigtails.  
He shoved a banana into her hand.

"A banana?" She started to peel the yellow fruit, "I know it's probably not a good idea to eat, but we need to get ready. Right? I don't want to go back to hunting on an empty stomach."

"The restaurant was full. I wonder why people still come here if there is a loony on the loose." Soul busied himself with his cake bar, topping it with a whole banana and congratulating himself for this wonderful idea.

"I don't know, I haven't seen anyone." Maka devoured her banana with inhuman speed. He was now sure that she was better than she was the morning before, she lost the sickly shade of pale her face had, even if she still looked queasy. But who wouldn't.

"I was just saying." Soul pressed through his teeth while he was chewing. It was one of those things where he was not sure if it was good or bad – she couldn't see that he was talking while he chewed his food, but his manners told him not to do it. Conflicting messages, and no way out.

Maka was already starting to get ready, she disappeared into the bathroom, where she bumped into the sink with a dull sound. She was in all likelihood putting her hair up while he was still busy with his cake-banana-creation. Soul wondered how they were going to confront Van Wegberg, they were now sure that the dangerous part was the octopus cane, and that the man himself was just a mindless madmen who wandered aimlessly.

* * *

They were waiting.

And waiting sucked.

The woods were far more friendly by the light of day, and even if neither of them could remember if their target would only come out at night, it was at least nice to be outside when it wasn't chilly and silent, even if Maka couldn't see the sun and Soul would have to wait a long time until the cold would creep into his metal body.  
They had talked about the weird, random abilities they had to face, and had to settle with the fact that there was no way for Maka to bypass them. She would just have to strike him down before he could utilize his cane.  
It was quite fascinating to Soul that he couldn't hear the screech while he was transformed, it made him wonder what kind of things he could withstand before it had any effect on him. He knew that harming him physically was close to impossible, he only really felt temperatures if he was exposed to them for a long time (he was able to feel Maka's hands, though), falling didn't affect him either and water was no problem.

What could even harm him?

Soul was placed upside down, leaning against a tree, and Maka sat next to him, his blade facing the other direction. It was as good as anything, and this time, he didn't even feel watched or uncomfortable. There were singing birds, small animals that rustled through the vegetation, and a weird, warm feeling on his...

A weird, warm feeling on his blade.

When did that happen? Did he fall asleep?

"Maka." He called out in a more than sober way. This was just so confusing. "Maka, I got him."

"What? Where?" She tried to grab his pole. "Soul, what..why are you so heavy?"

"I don't know, he stumbled right into the blade! I didn't even do a thing! He didn't even make a sound!" There was no way he could express the way he felt right now. "Just how dumb do you have to be to stumble into a gigantic blade when you try to sneak up one someone?!"

"Well, he _is...was _the 'Procrastinator'..uh..I'll just try to pull you out, if he's here, I could just..lever him.." Maka set her foot onto the back of their – now pretty dead – target. For someone who gave them a really hard time the night before, he went down quickly. And in the most idiotic way possible. "I don't know if that's the right angle, but I'm going to pull now!"

Soul was removed from the body with a rather comedic _plop _and transformed back, while Van Wegbergs body dissolved into nothingness, leaving a glowing soul behind – and his cane.

"Should we take the cane along?" He asked while grabbing the soul and swallowing it quickly. He didn't want to think about the fact that he just swallowed a glitter bomb.

"Maybe the school would like to do some research? Let's just take it." Maka yawned and stretched her arms. "And let us get home quickly, I don't want to stay here."

There was no way couldn't agree with that.

Soul collected the awful octopus cane and went after Maka, who was trotting around impatiently.  
He would probably be thinking back to this mission for a long time, after all, their target had been the most frustrating by far.

But it had also been the most stupid.


End file.
